Changing parents' mindsets and beliefs to improve STEM diversity.

Methods

Summary

In this planned research project, we will employ a survey experiment methodology to investigate the impact of an educational intervention on parental beliefs and biases regarding STEM. The key component involves randomly assigning middle school parents recruited online to either a control group or an experimental group, with the latter receiving an educational video aimed at dispelling stereotypes about gender differences in STEM aptitude. These surveys will provide valuable data to understand the malleability of parental beliefs and their connection to expressed preferences support for girls in STEM activities.

To ensure the replicability of our study, we plan to collaborate with a market research agency for participant recruitment, ensuring a representative sample. The intervention itself, presented in the form of an educational video, will be developed in collaboration with experts in education (i.e. teachers and pedagogical schools) and communication. Furthermore, all materials including survey instruments and video material will be made accessible for other researchers using platforms such as the Open Science Foundation to register all material and protocols.

Challenges

Anticipated challenges in this project include potential difficulty in achieving a representative sample, and it could also be challenging to ensure the effectiveness of the educational video intervention in changing parental beliefs. To address these challenges, careful planning and communication with the agency will be essential for sample representativeness. Furthermore, cognitive interviews with a small sample of parents (N=50) and iterative testing and feedback loops involving experts in education and communication will be employed to enhance the educational video's impact. 

Pre Analysis Plan

Main question/hypothesis: The main question being addressed in this study is whether an information intervention aimed at reducing parental stereotypical beliefs can lead to an improvement in support for girls in STEM activities and career paths.

Key dependent variable(s): The first key question is whether parents update their beliefs related to STEM in response to educational information. The second key question is whether changing beliefs experimentally changes the preferences for parental support and investment. These will be measured through survey questions before and after the intervention. A further key question is whether changing these beliefs (if they do) changes the preferences for parental support and investment. We will include standard stated preferences questions but also revealed preferences  measures including real-stakes such as with the help of donation decision to gauge parental support. The main tests of the paper are whether providing randomly selected participants with educational information changes beliefs and whether this changes preferences for parental support and investment related to STEM. In addition, we will also elicit other parental preferences, such as career aspirations for children. 

Conditions: Participants will be assigned to either a control group or an experimental group. The control group will not receive the educational video intervention, while the experimental group will be exposed to the video aimed at debunking stereotypes about gender differences in STEM aptitude.

Analyses: The causal effect of the education treatment on beliefs (and preferences) will be tested via non-parametric tests and depicted via bar charts and 95% confidence intervals. We will also run OLS regressions with beliefs/preferences as dependent variables, controlling for socio-demographic characteristics. 

Sample size: We will collect around 1,000 observations per treatment.

Additional pre-registration: In the survey, we ask subjects an “attention check” question”.