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confidence. Because of the relatively small number of cases, we were unable to analyze
these relationships by year.
For the most part, the relationships are indeed weak between change in confidence
that engineering is the right major, and family background factors (Table IID-3). The
only statistically significant relationships are for females, between change in confidence
and having siblings who went to college (p=.01) and support by significant others for
their pursuit of engineering (p=.08). The pattern with regard to parents’ education and
father’s occupational prestige is that students whose parents have less education or
occupational prestige are more likely to increase their self-confidence over the course of
the year, while the students whose parents are most highly educated are more likely to
lose self-confidence over the course of the year. It may be that the latter come in with
unrealistic expectations of the ease with which they will acquire the profession, while the
latter come in more apprehensive; the experience over the course of the year tends to
equalize their self-confidence. Similarly, it is the women with the lowest support from
outside the university for their pursuit of engineering whose self-confidence is raised the
most over the course of the year. On the other hand, women who have siblings in college
are less likely to lose self-confidence, perhaps because they have role models to help
them over any obstacles. The impression we get is that the Rowan experience tends to
reduce the disparities in engineering self-confidence between students of differing family
backgrounds, empowering the students with weaker family role models and support, and
not unduly capitalizing on the advantages students with stronger family role models and
support might have.
IID-146