STEM Inqueery: How Communion and Femininity Affects LGBTQ Individuals’ Belonging in STEM that Affects Their Motivation to Pursue STEM

Presenter Information

Jasmine Elise Graham
Elizabeth R. Brown

Faculty Sponsor

Dr. Elizabeth R. Brown

Faculty Sponsor College

College of Arts and Sciences

Faculty Sponsor Department

Psychology

Location

SOARS Virtual Conference

Presentation Website

https://unfsoars.domains.unf.edu/2021/posters/stem-inqueery-how-communion-and-femininity-affects-lgbtq-individuals-belonging-in-stem-that-affects-their-motivation-to-pursue-stem/

Keywords

SOARS (Conference) (2021 : University of North Florida) – Archives; SOARS (Conference) (2021 : University of North Florida) – Posters; University of North Florida -- Students -- Research – Posters; University of North Florida. Office of Undergraduate Research; University of North Florida. Graduate School; College students – Research -- Florida – Jacksonville – Posters; University of North Florida – Graduate students – Research – Posters; University of North Florida. Department of Psychology -- Research -- Posters

Abstract

Despite the growth in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields in the United States, only 60% of STEM majors complete their degrees. Although STEM is stereotyped as a cis (same gender as birth), straight male, agentic (self-focused), and not communal (other-oriented) field, the inclusion of communion in STEM boosts STEM motivation. Since LGBTQ students highly value communion and LGB(T)Q students are less likely than non-LGB(T)Q students to stay in STEM, we explored whether LGBTQ individuals’ desire for communal opportunities or feminine gender expression shapes their belonging or expectations for success in STEM which in turn affects their (future) motivation to pursue STEM. We collected data from 204 participants (125 non-LGBTQ women, 79 LGBTQ individuals) at University of North Florida. For LGBTQ individuals, their feminine gender expression negatively affected their belonging in STEM, which positively affected their (future) motivation to pursue STEM. While for non-LGBTQ women and LGBTQ individuals, perceived communal opportunities within STEM positively affected expectations for success in STEM, and subsequently positively affected their (future) motivation to pursue STEM. In conclusion, feminine expression was only a factor for LGBTQ individuals, not non-LGBTQ women, and only with the belonging path; communal opportunities was only predictive for the expectations for success path. We are going to explore this model in our second study. Audio Player

Comments

Audio Presentation Transcript:

My name is Jasmine Elise Graham. Hello, welcome to my poster about STEM Inqueery: How Communal and Femininity Affects LGBTQ Individuals’ Belonging in STEM and that Affects Their Motivation to Pursue STEM. STEM meaning science, technology, engineering, and mathematics within that STEM field, only 60% of those STEM majors actually complete their degrees. Further into that we see that STEM is seen to be very cisgender straight male, agentic, and non-communal field, where agentic is the pursuit of a promotion or achievement, and communal is working with others. In previous research that was most likely only conducting with non-LGBTQ individuals, we have seen that the inclusion of communion in STEM boost STEM motivation. However, as I stated, we don’t really know what happens for LGBTQ individuals. We do know that LGBTQ individuals highly valued communion and they are less likely to be within STEM fields. But we have not seen if communion boost STEM motivation for LGBTQ individuals. So that’s where our study comes into place where we’re looking to see okay, how does an individual’s motivation or future motivation pursue STEM is affected by their expectations for success, personal belonging in STEM, and how that is affected by their feminine gender expression, or desires for communal opportunities in STEM.

Our sample included 204 college students from the University of North Florida and of those that there’s 125 non-LGBTQ women and 79 LGBTQ individuals. Of those 79 LGBTQ individuals, we can see that they’re mostly LGBTQ women that are either bi- or pan- sexual, and same thing for bi- or pan- romantic. Moving on over to our scales that we use for this study, we have future motivation to pursue STEM which is looking into how you would enjoy a career within STEM, and would you strongly agree with that or would you strongly disagree with that. For a future motivation to pursue STEM, this is more of going into how much you’re willing to go into it or how likely you would be going into this field of STEM, and these would be asking like something about like, how very willing you are or how like extreme like from not at all to extremely interested in the field. For the expectations for success in STEM measure that was looking into how well you feel comparing yourself to other students in STEM fields or STEM classes and how are you better or worse than them. For belonging in STEM scale, this was looking at how you both you feel you belong in STEM classes, and that would be like if you were strongly agree or strongly disagreeing with that. For gender expression measure, this was asked in two parts a style “A” and style “B”. Style “A” was referring to femininity and style “B” of course referring to masculinity. They would be given a paragraph describing what either style “A” looks like or style “B” is giving different types of fashion or clothing, and then they would give an example what it would look like for women and what would it look like for men for each style. They then would rate how for themselves are not “A”/“B” they are to very “A”/“B” they are depending on what state are we looking at. For communal opportunities, we would ask them how much a career would have communal opportunities within six different STEM fields being mathematics, engineering, computer science, physics, biology, and psychology.

Moving over to our findings, which we used an indirect analysis. We do notice coming in opportunities being a part of this indirect path going through expectations for success which affects then motivation to pursue STEM and the future motivation pursue STEM. We do not see that communal opportunities is going through belonging in STEM to go to future motivations pursue STEM for either group, unlike what other previous research has said. The communal opportunities may only be going through the expectations for success path, as individuals may be thinking like, well STEM has these communal opportunities, ‘I feel like I could then can succeed which then make me like why want to go and pursue STEM,’ motivation to pursue STEM. Now for belonging and STEM affecting motivation, we see it does affect for both groups. However, for non-LGBTQ women, we don’t see what’s affecting that. In this model, however, for LGBTQ individuals, we see that feminine expression is negatively affecting belonging and STEM, which in turn affects motivation to pursue STEM. So, there must be something with feminine expression that’s affecting it for LGBTQ individuals to compare to non-LGBTQ women. It’d be interesting, so for a future direction we’re going to include another measure, and they’re asking about, what do you expect within STEM for the style to be for “A” and “B”. And now their future direction or next study (Study 2) for our MTurk study, we’re hoping to actually get non-LGBTQ men a big enough sample to actually run data on our previous one was only 25 men, and so compared to the other two groups, it was really biased and giving us inaccurate results. We are also hoping to get a more balanced sample of gender identity for LGBTQ individuals since we also have mainly LGBTQ women. Well, this is the end of my poster. So, if you have any questions, feel free to send me an email that’s located on the poster. And, once again, thank you for listening to my poster. Bye.

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