Examining institutional data from seven cohorts of students intending to major in biology across five research-intensive institutions, this work analyzes opportunity gaps-defined as the difference between the grade received by students from the dominant and nondominant sociodemographic groups in institutions of higher education-at the course-section level across mathematics, physics, biology, and chemistry disciplines. From this analysis, we find that the majority of course sections have large opportunity gaps between female and male students, students who are Black, Latino/a/e/x, or indigenous to the United States and its territories and students who are White or Asian, first-generation and non-first-generation students, and low-income and non-low-income students. This work provides a framework to analyze equity across institutions using robust methodology, including: using multiple approaches to measure grades, quantile regression rankscores which adjust for previous academic performance, and cluster analysis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Large introductory lecture courses are frequently post-secondary students' first formal interaction with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Grade outcomes in these courses are often disparate across student populations, which, in turn, has implications for student retention. This study positions such disparities as a manifestation of systemic inequities along the dimensions of sex, race/ethnicity, income, and first-generation status and investigates the extent to which they are similar across peer institutions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Students' sense of belonging in college-an individual's feelings of contentment, mattering, importance, and "finding one's place" in a social setting-can influence choice of major and career trajectory. We contribute to the belongingness literature through a mixed methods intersectional study of students attending a STEM-focused public university we call Meadow State University (MSU). We assess the potential for students' intersecting social identities to differentially influence their experiences with intersectional oppression-subjection to multiple systems of oppression due to simultaneous membership in more than one marginalized group-that, in turn, may influence their college pathways.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGrowth in the online survey market may be increasing response burden and possibly jeopardizing higher response rates. This meta-analysis evaluated survey trends over one decade (2011-2020) to determine: (1) changes in survey publication rates over time, (2) changes in response rates over time, (3) typical response rates within health sciences education research, (4) the factors influencing survey completion levels, and (5) common gaps in survey methods and outcomes reporting. Study I estimated survey publication trends between 2011 and 2020 using articles published in the top three health sciences education research journals.
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