Socioeconomic Disparity Factors in Computer Science Education

Abstract

Socioeconomic status (SES) continues to be an underexplored identity factor in computer science education research. My research plan is to identify socioeconomic status factors that have the greatest impact on a computer science student’s course performance and self-efficacy in computing. I plan to examine these factors by looking at populations of college-level computer science students from both community colleges and universities. To explore this, I will create a student survey that will collect information on a wide variety of socioeconomic status factors, demographics, self-efficacy, and beliefs about computing. This survey would also be used to acquire a student’s computer science course grades. Additionally, I hope to validate the socioeconomic status portion of the survey to create a standard way for fellow computing education researchers to measure the socioeconomic status of their students. By creating a more standard way to inquire about socioeconomic status, I hope to encourage more researchers in computer science education to explore socioeconomic disparity gaps. Lastly, using the results of the survey, I would like to conduct student interviews and utilize qualitative analysis techniques to further understand the impact of socioeconomic status on students’ learning outcomes, sense of belonging, and academic career in computing.