Elizabeth G. Creamer

Self-Authorship and Women's Career Decision Making

Current career literature provides little insight into how women interpret career-relevant experiences, advice, or information, particularly when it is contradictory. This paper uses findings from interviews with 40 college women to provide empirical confirmation for the link between self-authorship and career decision making. Findings underscore the role of inter-connectivity in womens decision making, particularly involving parents, and distinguish ways that this can reflect self-authorship. Self-authorship provides the theoretical framework to understand how students respond to career advice and suggests that students may reject career advice when it requires the cognitive complexity to engage diverse viewpoints. Findings endorse educational activities that require students to juggle competing knowledge claims to make complex decisions.

Collaborators' Attitudes about Differences of Opinion

Three clusters of responses emerged from the interview responses of members of largely career-equal faculty pairs about their encounters with substantive differences of opinion. The refusal to interpret differences of opinion as conflict contributes to innovation by promoting dialogue that may lead to significant new insight.

Exploring the Link Between Inquiry Paradigm and the Process of Collaboration

Case studies of long-term collaborators here test the links between inquiry paradigm or worldview and the practical aspects of the conduct of scholarly inquiry. The findings reveal that differences in ontological and epistemological assumptions do not always translate into practical differences in collaboration, while those who share the same inquiry paradigm can also have substantial differences in working methods. The article concludes that multiple models exist of effective collaboration.

Using a Mixed Methods Content Analysis to Analyze Mission Statements From Colleges of Engineering

A mixed method design was used to conduct a content analysis of the mission statements of colleges of engineering to map inductively derived codes with the EC 2000 outcomes and to test if any of the codes were significantly associated with institutions with reasonably strong representation of women. Most institution’s (25 of 48) mission statement had two or fewer of the outcomes endorsed by the accrediting agency. The diversity code was significantly related to the representation of women, but is not one of the outcomes identified by the accrediting agency. The research demonstrates how mixed methods can be applied to content analysis.

Preliminary Evidence of the Reliability and Validity of a Quantitative Measure of Self-Authorship

This article presents preliminary evidence of the reliability and validity of a measure of self-authorship derived from 18 items in the Career Decision Making Survey. The research conceptualizes a quantitative measure of self-authorship as a three-part score that reflects level of agreement with statements at each of the first three phases of development toward self-authorship. The instrument could be used to assess the outcomes of initiatives designed to promote growth in the development of self-authorship.

Representation of women and perceptions of support in engineering

A deductive coding scheme developed during a previous stage of a multi-institutional research project was used with interview data to gain a more nuanced understanding of the types of gender specific supports identified by female participants and how these might be related to the numeric representation of women. Findings confirm that gender ratios in a field affect perceptions of the gender appropriateness of a field. The numeric representation of women is a type of contextual support that is important because it communicates, not that women need special treatment, but that women belong and can succeed in a field. Within the context of a culture that communicates values that are consistent with it, extracurricular clubs like SWE and positive female role models, send the message that obstacles, while present, are surmountable and that the benefits associated with the outcome make the effort worthwhile.

Individual and environmental factors that significantly impact short- and long-term interest in engineering

This paper provides data and recommendations for best practices grounded in the argument that a set of individual qualities and elements of the educational setting that have been identified in the research literature as playing a significant role in promoting womens retention in engineering majors and interest in engineering as a career, have similarly significant effects on mens interests. Data from questionnaires completed by students in eight colleges or schools of engineering (N=1629) and from interviews conducted during nine campus visits demonstrated the importance of one individual quality-motivation-and one environmental quality — perceptions of support from family and friends-on both the short- and long-term interest in engineering of male and female undergraduate engineering majors. The perception that faculty members and peers cared about them and respected their ability to succeed in engineering was significant in predicting both mens and womens intent to remain in an engineering major. These finding underscore the importance of interactions that communicate the conviction that students have the ability and commitment to succeed in engineering.

Interactions among undergraduate engineers: How care and respect are demonstrated among peers

The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology requires all accredited engineering programs demonstrate that their students can function on multidisciplinary teams and communicate effectively. Previous research has shown that engineering faculty members remain uncertain on how to teach students to effectively work in groups and that care and respect from peers is a key factor related to both short- and long-term student interest in engineering. The purpose of this qualitative study was to obtain verbal descriptions of how care and respect or the lack thereof is experienced in engineering peer interactions. Eighteen participant interviews were conducted. The results of this study provided a list of actions that demonstrate care and respect and a lack thereof among engineering peers. Five conceptual categories of actions were identified. Study participants indicated that a lack of care and respect had been repeatedly experienced and/or observed during group work. Participants described a lack of guidance from faculty on how to effectively work in groups. While there are many educational advantages to group work, it also introduces some troubling peer dynamics. The findings further highlight a need for engineering faculty to teach their students how to communicate with peers and work effectively in groups.

Inter-Method Mixing as a Gateway to Methodological Innovation

We advance the idea that with the commitment to the intentional engagement of multiple sources of data or analytical procedures to explore complex problems as its core defining feature, the field of mixed methods may now be at a point that we can consider it as an inquiry logic that has the potential to spawn the construction of new methodologies. The special issue invites further conversation that builds on the challenge of mixing at the methodological level.

Enlarging the Conceptualization of Mixed Method Approaches to Grounded Theory With Intervention Research

The potential for mixed method approaches to offer a creative way to generate theory about human behavior in a complex social world has been observed but rarely executed in a way that is reflexive about either the procedures or its contribution. The analysis reported illustrates the untapped potential for the development of classic grounded theory with mixed method research approaches involving the evaluation of educational and health-related interventions. The analysis contributes to the literature by proposing a model that conceptualizes a fully integrated mixed method approach to grounded theory and introduces ideas about the potential for integration to occur at multiple stages in the research process. Discordant data can contribute to the development of more creative and nuanced theoretical models.