Computer science majors: sex role orientation, academic achievement, and social cognitive factors

Career Development Quarterly, June, 2006 by Chris Brown, Linda S. Garavalia, Mary Lou Hines Fritts, Elizabeth A. Olson

Discussion

The purposes of the present study were twofold: (a) to determine the sex role orientation of college students majoring in computer science and (b) to investigate differences in career decision-making self-efficacy, general and career locus of control, and academic achievement among computer science students who vary in sex role orientation. Because only one participant indicated having a masculine orientation, this orientation was not included in the analyses, and comparisons were made among feminine, androgynous, and undifferentiated orientations. The almost complete absence of a masculine sex role orientation in our sample participants is interesting and also quite surprising. A plausible explanation for why so few of our computer science participants were high in instrumentality (i.e., masculine traits) is discussed later in this section. An ANOVA was conducted to test whether sex differences might offer a competing explanation for any differences among the study variables. No significant sex differences were found across career decision-making self-efficacy, general and career locus of control, and academic achievement.

Our primary research question addressed differences in sex role orientation among college students majoring in computer science. We were particularly interested in the sex role orientation of female students, because computer science fields are regarded as traditionally male dominated. Earlier researchers suggested that possession of masculine traits is an important factor in differentiating between women in traditional and nontraditional careers (Gianakos & Subich, 1988). Contrary to this assertion, we found that 50% of the female participants in our sample of computer science majors possessed a feminine orientation and, therefore, were low in masculine traits.

In addition, none of the female participants reported a dominant male orientation, and only 19% reported an androgynous orientation (both high masculine and feminine traits). Moreover, Bem's (1974) assertion that sex-typed individual's achieve less success than their more androgynous counterparts in situations thought to be sex role inappropriate or incongruent was not supported. If this were the case, then the androgynous female participants in our sample would have achieved at higher levels than the feminine female participants. In our sample, no academic achievement differences were found among students with different sex role orientations. As previously noted, research findings related to academic achievement and sex role orientations, which have included both secondary and undergraduate students, have been mixed in terms of which sex role orientation displayed greater academic achievement. Our findings do not support this previous yet inconsistent research, which has found sex role differences.

Although women remain underrepresented in the computer science field, they composed 33% of our sample participants, which is higher than what has been reported in the literature. It is possible that our sample is different in some systematic way, and we contemplate whether our findings represent a one-site phenomenon. What we do know is that the university at which our sample participants were students had not engaged in any organized efforts or specific strategies targeted at the recruitment of women in past years or at the time we collected our data. Thus factors that might account for the uniqueness of this midwestern university remain perplexing.