Citation
Stout, J., Dasgupta, N., Hunsinger, M., & McManus, M. (2011). STEMing the tide: Using in-group experts to inoculate women’s self-concept in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 255-270. [one of three studies described in a single report]
Highlights
- The study’s objective was to examine the impact of interacting with a male or female upperclass student majoring in math and psychology (hereafter referred to as a male or female peer expert) on female undergraduate STEM majors’ attitudes toward math and performance on a math test.
- The study used computerized tasks and students’ self-reported attitudes to compare performance in and attitudes toward math of female undergraduate students who interacted with a female peer expert and those who interacted with a male peer expert.
- The study found that female students who interacted with a male peer expert exhibited negative implicit attitudes toward math compared with English, whereas female students who interacted with a female peer expert had the same attitudes toward math and English. Female students who interacted with a female peer expert attempted more problems on the math test than those who interacted with a male peer expert.
- The quality of causal evidence presented in this report is high, as it was based on a well-implemented randomized controlled trial. This means we are confident that the estimated effects are attributable to interacting with a female peer expert, and not to other factors.
Features of the Study
The study randomly assigned 72 female undergraduate students majoring in a STEM field at a large university in the United States to interact with a male or female peer expert. The peer expert conveyed to the participant that he or she was a math expert double-majoring in math and psychology and requested that the participant complete some math and psychology tests that he or she developed for a senior project. Immediately after these interactions with the peer expert, the participants completed computerized tasks to measure their implicit and explicit attitudes toward math and English and completed a challenging math test derived from the Graduate Record Examination subject test. The authors conducted statistical tests to estimate differences in the outcomes across the two study groups.
Findings
- The study found that students who interacted with a male peer expert exhibited negative implicit attitudes toward math, whereas students who interacted with a female peer expert had the same attitude toward math and English. The difference between the two groups was statistically significant.
- Students who interacted with a female peer expert attempted more problems on the math test than those who interacted with a male peer expert. The differences between the male and female groups were statistically significant.
Considerations for Interpreting the Findings
The authors estimated multiple related impacts on outcomes related to attitudes toward STEM. Performing multiple statistical tests on related outcomes makes it more likely that some impacts will be found statistically significant purely by chance and not because they reflect program effectiveness. The authors did not perform statistical adjustments to account for the multiple tests, so the number of statistically significant findings in these domains is likely to be overstated. However, CLEAR was able to adjust for these multiple comparisons using information presented in the report; the findings presented here are those that remained statistically significant after the adjustments were made.
Causal Evidence Rating
The quality of causal evidence presented in this report is high, as it was based on a well-implemented randomized controlled trial. This means we are confident that the estimated effects are attributable to interacting with a female peer expert, and not to other factors.
Additional Sources
Stout, J., Dasgupta, N., Hunsinger, M., & McManus, M. (2010). STEMing the tide: Using in-group experts to inoculate women’s self-concept in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online publication.