Representation of women in CS: how do we measure a program's success?

Authors:
Brad Richards
Affiliations:
University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA, USA
Venue:
Proceedings of the 40th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education
Year:
2009

Citing 24
Cited 1

The experience of women in undergraduate computer science: what does the research say?

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin
A psychological perspective on gender differences in computing participation

SIGCSE '94 Proceedings of the twenty-fifth SIGCSE symposium on Computer science education
On the retention of female computer science students

SIGCSE '96 Proceedings of the twenty-seventh SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
A study of barriers to women in undergraduate computer science.

SIGCSE '98 Proceedings of the twenty-ninth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
A structured review of reasons for the underrepresentation of women in computing

Proceedings of the 2nd Australasian conference on Computer science education
Women in computing: what does the data show?

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin
Toward improving female retention in the computer science major

Communications of the ACM
Building an effective computer science student organization: the Carnegie Mellon women@SCS action plan

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin - Women and Computing
Encouraging women in computer science

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin - Women and Computing
An ACM-W literature review on women in computing

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin - Women and Computing
African American women in the computing sciences: a group to be studied

SIGCSE '02 Proceedings of the 33rd SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
Gender differences in computer science students

SIGCSE '03 Proceedings of the 34th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
CS girls rock: sparking interest in computer science and debunking the stereotypes

SIGCSE '03 Proceedings of the 34th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
Augustana women in computer science (AWCS): a program to encourage women in the pursuit of technical education and careers

Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges
Must there be so few?: including women in CS

Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Software Engineering
Using departmental surveys to assess computing culture: quantifying gender differences in the classroom

Proceedings of the 8th annual conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
A CS1 course designed to address interests of women

Proceedings of the 35th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
Climbing onto the shoulders of giants

Proceedings of the 36th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
Together is better: strengthening the confidence of women in computer science via a learning community

Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges
Women catch up: gender differences in learning programming concepts

Proceedings of the 37th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
Gender, achievement, and persistence in an undergraduate computer science program

ACM SIGMIS Database
Large dataset offers view of math and computer self-efficacy among computer science undergraduates

Proceedings of the 44th annual Southeast regional conference
Forming a women's computer science support group

Proceedings of the 38th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
Broadening participation in computing: issues and challenges

Proceedings of the 12th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education

Women in CS: an evaluation of three promising practices

Proceedings of the 41st ACM technical symposium on Computer science education

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of the data on representation of women in US liberal arts computer science departments, using 10 years' worth of IPEDS data. What began as a search for departments with exemplary representation ended with the conclusion that the representation data is too unstable to be a useful measure of success: The correlation between average representation values in consecutive five-year periods is small, only r=0.156, and not significantly different from zero (p=0.143, t=1.477) for this set of institutions. Other metrics and sample populations are considered with similar results. This result has important implications for studies assessing the impact of departmental interventions on the representation of women, as well as research on the factors that influence representation.