Stereotype Threat: Undermining the Persistence of Racial Minority Freshmen in the Sciences

Stereotype Threat: Undermining the Persistence of Racial Minority Freshmen in the Sciences Mitchell J. Chang, Kevin Eagan, Monica Lin, Sylvia Hurtado UCLA AERA April 16, 2009

Problem • Roughly half of undergraduates who major in the sciences switch out of these fields, and very few non-science majors switch to science majors • 24% of URM students complete a bachelor’s degree in science within 6 years of college entry compared to 40% of White students • U.S. science pipeline called “leakier than warped rubber tubing” and underrepresented minorities are “missing persons” in those fields

Undergraduate student persistence in science • An individual student’s own educational success is more than the sum of his or her personal will, aspiration, and traditional academic indicators such as test scores and high school grades; • One’s gender, racial, and socioeconomic background, for example, also help shape one’s opportunity for college success; • Educational experiences within institutions are not uniform but are directly affected by a student’s racial background and the structure of opportunity encountered.

Stereotype Threat (Steele & Aronson) • Two components • Domain identification • Negative racial experiences and negative stereotypes • Stereotype threat can lead to: • Academic underperformance • Dis-identification

From “Lab to Field” • “This theory would be the least bit interesting unless it was attempting to describe performance differences that occur in real-world (i.e., natural) settings” (Osborne). • Challenge: researcher cannot manipulate the degree of threat directly but must assess it indirectly by tapping into natural variation in real-world populations. • Those that have focused on “real-world” consequences in the context of higher education have done so through social surveys.

Data Source and Sample • 2004 Freshman Survey • 2005 Your First College Year (YFCY) survey • 1,745 URM biomedical or behavioral science* major students at 123 institutions * (Biomedical and behavioral science majors include: general biology, biochemistry/biophysics, microbiology/bacterial biology, zoology, other biological science, chemistry, medicine/dentistry/veterinary medicine, pharmacy, and psychology)

Stereotype Threat Conditions • Domain Identification (alpha = 0.68): • Importance of: • (1) obtaining recognition from my colleagues for contributions to my field; • (2) becoming an authority in my field; • (3) making a theoretical contribution to science; • (4) improving the health of minority communities; and (5) working to find a cure to a health problem. • Negative racial experiences (alpha = 0.72): • Frequency that students • (1) felt insulted or threatened because of race/ethnicity; • (2) had tense, somewhat hostile race-related interactions; • (3) had guarded/cautious race-related interactions; • (4) have been singled out because of race/ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation; and • (5) have heard faculty express stereotypes about racial/ethnic groups in class.

Research Design • Variables • Demographic characteristics • Academic preparation • Concern about financing college education • Academic self-concept • Institutional structural characteristics • Institutional Selectivity • Analysis • Hierarchical Generalized Linear Modeling (HGLM)

Results for Model 1 (includes all background, institution, & ST conditions) • High domain identification: 3.99% more likely to persist than students with moderate domain identification • No main effect associated with students’ level of stigma-inducing experiences on persistence • Participation in pre-professional/departmental club (10.98% more likely to persist) • Institutional selectivity: 100-point increase reduced persistence probability by 3.81%

Results for Model 2 (includes ST Interaction Term) • Interaction term representing stereotype threat: significant and negative effect on science persistence • One-point increase in stereotype threat interaction resulted in a 5.67% reduction in their probability of persisting;

Stereotype Threat: Undermining the Persistence of Racial Minority Freshmen in the Sciences Figure 1 Interaction Effect of Domain Identification and Stigma-Inducing Experiences on Students’ Likelihood of Science Major Persistence

Conclusions • Findings support Steele’s claims that “stereotype threat affects only a subportion of the stereotyped group, and in the area of schooling, probably affects confident students more than unconfident ones”; • Varying effects of domain identification • Reduce chances that students will • (1) experience racial insults & threats • (2) be singled out because of race/ethnicity, & • (3) have instructors who express stereotypes.

Resources & Project Staff Faculty: Sylvia Hurtado, Co-Principal Investigator Mitchell Chang, Co-Principal Investigator Graduate Research Assistants: Kevin Eagan Lorelle Espinsoa Christopher Newman Administrative Staff: Aaron Pearl Jessica Sharkness Minh Tran Paolo Velasco Papers and reports are available for download from project website: http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/heri/nih Project e-mail: herinih@ucla.edu

Stereotype Threat: Undermining the Persistence of Racial Minority Freshmen in the Sciences