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Research shows that the LGBTQ climate in engineering, and other STEM, undergraduate degree programs is rife with heteronormativity and cissexism, leading LGBTQ students to leave STEM majors and careers at higher rates than their heterosexual, cisgender peers. In order to develop a diverse STEM workforce and adequately prepare the next generation of professionals in STEM, higher education, and especially engineering education, must address inequities such as these to ensure broad participation in STEM fields. This NSF CAREER-funded project helps meet this need by examining the participation of LGBTQ students in STEM fields. The project focuses on three primary research aims to address this purpose: test the relationships between the composition of LGBTQ students’ social networks and non-cognitive STEM outcomes, compare STEM degree completion rates between LGBTQ students and their cisgender, heterosexual peers, and explore the intersection of STEM discipline-based identity (e.g., engineering identity, science identity) with sexual and gender identity. This project stands to improve our understanding of how to broaden participation in STEM by pursuing robust research efforts that illuminate the ways sexual and gender identity shape trajectories into, through, and out of STEM. The purpose of this poster is to present preliminary outcomes from the first research aim of the project, which is to test the relationship between composition of students’ social networks and non-cognitive outcomes, and compare these relationships by sexual and gender identities. We hypothesize that homophily within students’ social networks, especially for heterosexual and cisgender students, will predict greater levels of identification with one’s STEM discipline, sense of belonging in STEM, and commitment to a STEM major. LGBTQ students whose LGBTQ connections are primarily outside STEM are hypothesized to feel more of a pull away from STEM. This poster focuses on the social network analysis phase of the project, including instrument development, data collection procedures, and preliminary analysis of the data. Data collection will commence in the spring 2022 semester. Social network analysis (SNA) is a method that measures and represents the patterns and information of contextually bound structural relationships to explain why the relationships occur and the outcomes of their existence, and SNA is only recently gaining ground in educational research. We developed a survey that incorporates generating an ego-centric social network, or the people an individual relies on most for support, with existing measures for sense of belonging, discipline-based identity, and commitment to field of study, adapted for this study’s purpose. The survey validation procedure included cognitive interviews with undergraduate students and expert reviews by engineering education and institutional research experts. Data collection will occur at five colleges and universities nation-wide, representing a range of institutional types, geographical diversity, and student body diversity. The poster will detail the theory and procedures that constitute SNA research, the survey development process for this phase of the project, and preliminary results from analysis of the data.
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LGBTQ Network Homophily and Sense of Belonging in STEM Majors
The purpose of this research study is to test whether LGBTQ network homophily predicts higher sense of belonging among LGBTQ students, and if this relationship differs between STEM and non-STEM majors. Network homophily describes how sameness and difference within a person’s social network provides access to different types of resources, and we hypothesize that LGBTQ STEM students have access to fewer LGBTQ sources of support than their peers outside of STEM. The study comprised 315 LGBTQ students from four U.S. research universities nationally. In this sample, 66% of participants were STEM majors, and 29% identified as transgender, gender nonconforming, or nonbinary (TGNC). Multiple regression analyses were performed to test the effect of being a STEM major and homophily within students’ social networks on sense of belonging. Results demonstrated several nuances in the relationship between network homophily and sense of belonging. Cisgender LGBQ students reported significantly higher sense of belonging than their TGNC peers. LGBTQ students relying exclusively on cis-hetero sources of academic support reported lower belonging than those with at least some LGBTQ network members. Few differences were observed between STEM and non-STEM students, meaning that gender identity and network homophily play a stronger role in sense of belonging than being a STEM major. Overall, these findings support the conception of homophily as an indicator of a supportive STEM learning environment for LGBTQ students, fostering equitable education. This emphasizes the need for targeted support mechanisms within academic disciplines to enhance the persistence and success of LGBTQ students in higher education.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2046233
- PAR ID:
- 10569003
- Publisher / Repository:
- ASEE Conferences
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Montana State University, Bozeman, MT
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2-1153-45668
