Collaborative Research: SBP: Broadening participation: Reducing the consequences of subtle discrimination in STEM

University Of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

Broadening the participation of underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) is a critical goal in the staffing, management, and effectiveness of the U.S. workforce. Indeed, African American and Hispanic people comprise less than 10% of the STEM workforce. The overarching goal of the proposed research is to increase the recruitment, retention, and preparation of Hispanic and African American students for STEM careers. We focus on the subtle yet significant messages that minority students encounter in STEM contexts that undermine their success. We uniquely consider the ways that allies, or majority group members who strive to end oppression toward, and advocate on behalf of, minority group members, can effectively address subtle discrimination, and thus ultimately support the STEM interest, efficacy, achievement, and workplace success of minority students. In summary, the findings from this work will serve as an impetus for scholarship on minority stress interventions and ally engagement. Additionally, it will offer immediately applicable strategies for retaining African American and Hispanic students in STEM, a necessary step for increasing the representation of racial minorities in the U.S. STEM workforce. This research pursues the overarching goal of developing and testing strategies that enhance the retention of African American and Hispanic students in STEM careers by identifying and evaluating ally behaviors that reduce the detrimental consequences of subtle discrimination. One explanation for this shortage is the subtle differences in students' formative college experiences. In so doing, we build and test a conceptual model that uniquely integrates attributional ambiguity and stress and coping theories with emerging insights about the influence of allies. We advance robust logic based on evidence from the fields related to the organizational science to propose that the ambiguity of subtle discrimination depletes cognitive and affective resources necessary for achievement in STEM. This reasoning reflects the first thorough analysis of why and how subtle discrimination is problematic and points directly to ambiguity reduction strategies as powerful theory-driven buffers of these effects. We blend complementary methods of experience sampling and laboratory experiment to build theoretically meaningful and practically useful knowledge. This work will provide specific, evidence-based strategies to support African American and Hispanic college students, thereby enhancing their STEM interest, efficacy, motivation, achievement, and ultimately career choice and success in organizations. In particular, we focus on the previously unexamined role of motivated observers--allies--in reducing the consequences of subtle discrimination for its targets and thus catalyze new diversity science. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.