– Family plans do not contribute to women’s attrition during college but are negatively associated with men’s intentions to pursue an engineering career. Additionally, math self-assessment does not predict behavioral or intentional persistence once students enroll in a STEM major.
– The authors find that professional role confidence predicts behavioral and intentional persistence, and that women’s relative lack of this confidence contributes to their attrition.
– The authors find no difference in levels of expertise and career-fit confidence by race and ethnicity for either men or women. Expertise confidence, however, may be particularly important for Hispanic students’ intentional persistence, and career-fit confidence may be important for Asian students’ behavioral persistence.
– Math self-assessment is significantly and positively related to whether students enter college as engineering majors. However, once students matriculate into a math-intensive major, profession-specific assessments, such as expertise and career-fit confidence, seem to replace math self-assessment as predictors of persistence.
– When men switch out of engineering, however, they are more likely than women to switch to non-STEM majors.
– Men report higher levels of intentional persistence; that is, they are more likely than women to intend to be an engineer in five years.
– Men in their sample rate their math skills significantly more positively than women rate their own math skills. However, women and men do not earn significantly different grade point averages in college; their SAT math and verbal scores at the end of high school, although well above average, are also statistically similar.
– Men in their sample have significantly more expertise confidence and career-fit confidence than do women. If these measures of self-assessment and confidence are significantly related to persistence, then these differentials could explain gendered persistence.
* Gender differences in persistence in Engineering.