Frontiers in Psychology | |
Understanding the Transient Nature of STEM Doctoral Students’ Research Self-Efficacy Across Time: Considering the Role of Gender, Race, and First-Generation College Status | |
article | |
Kaylee Litson1  Jennifer M. Blaney2  David F. Feldon1  | |
[1] Department of Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences, Utah State University, United States;Department of Educational Leadership, Northern Arizona University, United States | |
关键词: self-efficacy; research self-efficacy; doctoral student; longitudinal; stability; autoregressive; individual differences; within-person and between-person effects; | |
DOI : 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.617060 | |
学科分类:社会科学、人文和艺术(综合) | |
来源: Frontiers | |
【 摘 要 】
Developing research self-efficacy is an important part of doctoral student preparation. Despite the documented importance of research self-efficacy, little is known about the progression of doctoral students’ research self-efficacy over time in general and for students from minoritized groups. This study examined both within- and between-person stability of research self-efficacy from semester to semester over 4 years, focusing on doctoral students in biological sciences ( N = 336). Using random intercept autoregressive analyses, we evaluated differences in stability across gender, racially minoritized student status, and first-generation student status. Results showed similar mean levels of self-efficacy across demographic groups and across time. However, there were notable differences in between-person and within-person stability over time, specifically showing higher between-person and lower within-person stability for racially minoritized and first-generation students. These findings indicate that racially minoritized and first-generation students’ research self-efficacy reports were less consistent from semester to semester. Such results may indicate that non-minoritized and continuing-generation students’ experiences from semester to semester typically reinforce their beliefs about their own abilities related to conducting research, while such is not the case for racially minoritized nor first-generation students. Future research should examine what types of experiences impact self-efficacy development across doctoral study to offer more precise insights about factors that influence these differences in within-person stability.
【 授权许可】
CC BY
【 预 览 】
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RO202108170007662ZK.pdf | 1230KB | download |