Multi-Disciplinary, Scientific, Gender Research

Abstract

Many phenomena of interest in education research are results of voluntary human action: whether a first-year college student elects to pursue a degree in information technology or not, whether the pursuit is in computer science vs. computer engineering, and whether the student will persist in a discipline throughout her or his college matriculation or change disciplines after a year or two. Although the human action is observable and can be tracked, the reasons an election is made and when it is made are not easily modeled. This article describes the design of a multidisciplinary, scientific study of gender-based differences, and ethnic and cultural models in the computing disciplines. The term computing disciplines is a collective one subsuming for ease of discussion the various disciplines that have evolved from the mid 20th century through the present 21st century, for example, computer engineering, computer science, computer information systems, information science, information technology, telecommunication systems management, and so forth. The researchers and study advisors formed a multidisciplinary team that is investigating in a scientific way the psychological, social, and educational rigidities that might exist between computing disciplines, and in so doing is developing different predictive models for women and ethnically underrepresented groups, in particular, African Americans. The article highlights recognized guiding principles for conducting scientific research in education and explains how the guiding principles have been implemented thus far in the study.