Paper Info
Title
How do we measure success?: a new instrument for evaluating girls' progress in middle and high school computing programs (abstract only)
Abstract
Girls and women continue to be underrepresented in technology. This persistent underrepresentation inhibits innovation by ignoring the diverse perspectives and life experiences women bring to invention and problem solving. Furthermore, disregard for girls and women's participation exacerbates existing economic disparities for women. To reverse these trends, a number of programs designed to engage girls in computing have emerged in recent years. Often these programs are not evaluated, or if they are, informal surveys are used. These instruments are usually unable to adequately assess change in interest, confidence and future plans for computing. In addition, sample sizes tend to be small and, because different programs use different surveys, results cannot be aggregated or compared across programs. To address this gap, NCWIT has been piloting a new evaluation instrument informed by Social Cognitive Career Theory (Lent et al., 2008). The instrument was piloted with two groups of girls: 312 Globaloria middle and high school students and 1500 girls who applied to NCWIT's Aspirations program from 2007 to 2013. Reliability analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were conducted for both datasets, showing high internal consistency. This poster session will provide more detail on the instrument, how it has been used and tested, and next steps in scaling its use. In making this tool widely available, we hope to increase consistency in the evaluation of girls? participation in computing education programs, enabling us to increase sample sizes; compare results across programs; and accelerate contributions to the gender and computing knowledge base.
Year
DOI
Venue
2014
10.1145/2538862.2544293
SIGCSE
Keywords
Field
DocType
high internal consistency,computing knowledge base,different survey,high school computing program,reliability analysis,new instrument,aspirations program,high school student,sample size,confirmatory factor analysis,new evaluation instrument,different program
Social cognitive theory,Computer science,Confirmatory factor analysis,Knowledge management,Pedagogy,Mathematics education,Knowledge base,Sample size determination
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
0
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Catherine S. Ashcraft100.68
Wendy M. DuBow2167.29
Zhen Wu300.34