Confidence, Interest, and Gender Perception in non-Computer Science Majors: an Instrument Re-validation Study

Abstract

To broaden participation in the computer science (CS) field and its workforce, it is important to consider how students from non- CS majors enter the field at various points along the educational pipeline. Gaining insight into these students’ attitudes and interests toward CS requires a validated, reliable instrument that can capture the factors influencing their perceptions. While several tools have been developed to measure motivation, attitudes, knowledge, and self-efficacy in CS, few are specifically designed to focus on non-CS majors who may hold peripheral or emerging interests in the discipline. In this study, exploratory factor analysis was used to re-validate the Engineering Students’ Attitudes towards CS survey initially created by Hoegh and Moskal using a population of non-CS majors. Results indicated that a 1-factor solution best fits the data for the Interest, Confidence, and Gender Equality Perceptions (GEP) constructs. Unique to this study, is support for a shortened 5-item GEP subscale. Results showed that the 5-item GEP performed as well as (and at times better than) the 10-item GEP. Based on these results, we recommend researchers wishing to examine Gender Equality Perceptions use a shortened version of the subscale utilizing only the 5 positively worded items. As a secondary interest of the work, results indicated women were nearly a full standard deviation higher on GEP subscales (Cohen’s d = .961 and .837). This is considered a large effect size in social science research and indicates women had higher ratings of gender equality in CS than men did.