Research: Characterizing Gendered Socialization of Early Career Civil Engineers to Promote Inclusive Practices and Retention of a Diverse Workforce

研究：表征早期职业土木工程师的性别社会化，以促进包容性实践和保留多元化的劳动力

• 批准号: 2414042
• 负责人: Kacey Beddoes
• 金额: $ 34.69万
• 依托单位: Washington State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2024-02-01 至 2026-05-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2414042&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Research; Characterizing; Gendered; Socialization; Early

There is a pressing need to better understand the high rates of attrition from engineering careers, particularly within their first decade on the job. Therefore, this project will examine the organizational socialization of newcomer civil engineers and will focus specifically on how the socialization process is gendered in ways that contribute to attrition from the profession. It will build on a previous longitudinal study on the same topic and will continue the long-term work of developing processes of acculturation to the engineering profession that are compatible with intersecting non-normative identities by refining and expanding an empirically-supported and engineering-specific model of gendered socialization. The integrated education and research plan will yield a dramatic impact on the field of engineering education by prioritizing the importance of underutilized gender theories, enrolling men in gender research and systems change, and addressing the gap in research on engineering workplaces. Other than the original study that this project builds on, no existing research has systematically examined the gendered organizational socialization experiences of newcomer men and women engineers. Ultimately, this project will facilitate greater equity in the socialization of newcomer engineers in order to decrease attrition from engineering careers and broaden participation of underrepresented groups in engineering. Furthermore, this project will contribute simultaneously to the fields of engineering education, engineering studies, organizational studies, and gender studies, among others.The objectives of this project will be to refine and expand a theoretical model of gendered socialization in civil engineering workplaces and to create research-based interventions for more inclusive socialization. The study will involve two groups of participants. Group 1 will be early career civil engineers from around the country who have been participating in a similar study since 2018. They work in engineering firms, as well as in governmental organizations at the federal, state, and county levels. When the project begins, they will be in the fifth and sixth years of their careers. For this group, mixed-methods data will be collected longitudinally for three years through bi-monthly Individual Socialization Logs (an instrument developed during the course of the previous project) and twice-yearly in-depth interviews. The survey and interviews will explore their experiences in the workplace, including their biggest challenges, the most important things they are learning, their most memorable interactions, and their relationships with co-workers. Findings will be used to refine and expand the model that was created based on the first few years of their careers. Group 2 will be former early career civil engineers who left the engineering profession for a non-engineering career. They will participate in a one-time interview that will explore the reasons they left engineering, thought processes and timelines leading to that decision, what they think about their decisions now, workplace experiences that could have made a difference, and ways university could have better prepared them. From this data, a typology of the reasons for leaving and organizational socialization factors that played a role will be created. That typology will then be compared to the existing theoretical model and survey instrument to determine what additions need to be made to both in light of the experiences of those who have left civil engineering. Project outcomes will include identification and characterization of facets of organizational socialization (e.g., practices, processes, relationships and social networks) that are gendered, including how they are gendered intersectionally. Research findings and the model based on them will be utilized to create professional formation materials for civil engineering professionals. The professional formation materials will be implemented nationally and locally.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

迫切需要更好地了解工程职业的高消耗率，尤其是在工作的头十年内。因此，该项目将研究新移民土木工程师的组织社会化，并将专门关注社会化过程是如何以促进职业消耗的方式性别的。它将以先前关于同一主题的纵向研究为基础，并将继续为工程专业发展提供适应性的过程的长期工作，这些过程与与非规范认同相交的工程专业兼容，通过完善和扩大了经验和工程特定的性别社交模型。综合教育和研究计划将通过优先考虑未充分利用性别理论的重要性，使男性参与性别研究和系统变化，并解决工程工作场所的研究差距，从而对工程教育领域产生巨大影响。除了该项目建立的原始研究外，没有现有的研究系统地研究了新手男女工程师的性别社会化经验。最终，该项目将促进新移民工程师社会化的更大公平性，以减少工程职业的流失，并扩大代表性不足的工程团体的参与。此外，该项目将同时为工程教育，工程研究，组织研究和性别研究等领域做出贡献。该项目的目标将是完善和扩大土木工程工作中性别社会化的理论模型，并为基于研究的干预措施创造更多的社会化。该研究将涉及两组参与者。第1组将是来自全国各地的早期职业土木工程师，他们自2018年以来就从事类似研究。他们在工程公司以及联邦，州和县级的政府组织中工作。当项目开始时，他们将处于职业生涯的第五和第六年。对于该组，混合方法数据将通过双月的个人社会化日志（在上一个项目的过程中开发的一种工具）和每年两次的深度访谈进行纵向收集三年。调查和访谈将探索他们在工作场所的经验，包括他们最大的挑战，他们学习的最重要的事情，最令人难忘的互动以及与同事的关系。发现将用于根据职业生涯的头几年来完善和扩展创建的模型。第2组将是以前的早期职业土木工程师，他们离开工程专业从事非工程职业。他们将参加一次一次性面试，探讨他们离开工程学，思维过程和时间表的原因，导致该决定，他们现在对自己的决策的看法，可能有所作为的工作场所经历，以及大学的方式可以更好地做好准备。从这些数据中，将创造出离开的原因和组织社会化因素的类型。然后，将将这种类型学与现有的理论模型和调查工具进行比较，以确定鉴于离开土木工程的人的经验，两者都需要增加两者。项目成果将包括对组织社会化方面（例如实践，过程，关系和社交网络）的识别和表征，包括性别的方式，包括如何在相交中性别性别。研究发现及基于它们的模型将用于为土木工程专业人士创建专业的编队材料。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是值得通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的审查标准来评估值得支持的。