Development of a measure of intersectional socioeconomic inequality that extends beyond income

Justin Charles Major; Allison Godwin

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Conference: 2025 Collaborative Network for Engineering & Computing Diversity (CoNECD)
Location: San Antonio, Texas
Publication Date: February 9, 2025
Start Date: February 9, 2025
End Date: February 11, 2025
Conference Session: Track 6: Technical Session 5: Development of a measure of intersectional socioeconomic inequality that extends beyond income
Tagged Topics: Diversity and 2025 CoNECD Paper Submissions
Page Count: 38
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--54079
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/54079
Download Count: 27

Paper Authors

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Justin Charles Major Rowan University orcid.org/0000-0002-3111-8509

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Dr. Justin C. Major (they/them) is an Assistant Professor of Experiential Engineering Education at Rowan University where they leads ASPIRE Lab (Advancing Student Pathways through Inequality Research in Engineering). Justin’s research focuses on low-income students, engineering belonging and marginalization mechanisms, adverse childhood experiences, and feminist approaches to EER, and connects these topics to broader understandings of student success in engineering. Justin completed their Ph.D. in Engineering Education (’22) and M.S. in Aeronautics and Astronautics (’21) at Purdue University, and two B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and Secondary Mathematics Education at the University of Nevada, Reno (’17). Atop their education, Justin is a previous NSF Graduate Research Fellow and has won over a dozen awards for research, service, and activism related to marginalized communities, including the 2020 ASEE ERM Division Best Diversity Paper for their work on test anxiety. As a previous homeless and food-insecure student, Justin is eager to challenge and change engineering engineering education to be a pathway for socioeconomic mobility and broader systemic improvement rather than an additional barrier.

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Allison Godwin Cornell University orcid.org/0000-0002-0741-3356

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Allison Godwin, Ph.D. is the Dr. G. Stephen Irwin '67, '68 Professor in Engineering Education Research (Associate Professor) in the Robert Frederick Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell University. She is also the Associate Director of the Cornell NanoScale Science and Technology Facility and a McCormick Teaching Excellence Institute Research Fellow. Her research focuses on how identity, among other affective factors, influences diverse groups of students to choose engineering and persist in engineering. She also studies how different experiences within the practice and culture of engineering foster or hinder belonging, motivation, and identity development. Dr. Godwin graduated from Clemson University with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and Ph.D. in Engineering and Science Education. Her research earned her a National Science Foundation CAREER Award focused on characterizing latent diversity, which includes diverse attitudes, mindsets, and approaches to learning to understand engineering students’ identity development. She has won several awards for her research including the 2021 Chemical Engineering Education William H. Corcoran Award, 2022 American Educational Research Association Education in the Professions (Division I) 2021-2022 Outstanding Research Publication Award, and the 2023 AIChE Excellence in Engineering Education Research Award.

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Abstract

In this research paper, we describe our initial development of a holistic measure of intersectional socioeconomic inequality that accounts for both the inequalities that lead to and stem from differences in income, impacting (non)engineering students in and out of the classroom.

Low-income students’, henceforth referred to as socioeconomically disadvantaged students (SDS), challenges traversing engineering extend beyond their access to income specifically. Research suggests that SDS, especially those from multi-marginalized groups, are impacted by various overlapping forms of (non)socioeconomic inequality. This overlap leads to unequal access to resources and experience that, otherwise, supports STEM success. However, traditional socioeconomic measures do not reflect realities of inequality, instead measures focus on income or capital which are bare of these relationships. Yet, how socioeconomic disadvantage is defined alters how SDS are impacted by policy (e.g., financial aid), including how researchers and practitioners create a more equitable engineering education (Atwood et al., 2020). Thus, a measure that accounts for the complex processes that lead to resource deprivation is needed.

In this work, we consider inequalities that impact students and members of their communities amongst their home, neighborhood, and school environments, hypothesizing that these inequalities come together to create an “ecosystem of disadvantage” that adversely impacts SDS. Our process and final measure reflect this existence. To develop the measure, we obtained restricted-access to the US National Center for Education Statistics’ Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002) which tracked the trajectories of 16,200 (non)engineering students from their 10th grade year in high school (2002) to their 8th year out of high school (2012). The restricted-access set contains finite geographic, demographic, and occupational data which we used to ascertain a more nuanced valuation of students’ various socioeconomics. Such nuance was determined by pairing the data with publicly available statistics from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census Bureau, and Departments of Agriculture and Education, and statistics from the American Association of University Women. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used to identify potential underlying factors amongst the socioeconomic data. Thereafter, structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to confirm the structure of the latent factors, and to model latent variables and relationships to other socioeconomic variables in tandem.

Using EFA, we identified that three latent factors, Parent Educational Involvement, Household Educational Resources, and School Hindrances existed that could be used to better describe students’ experiences in STEM. Using SEM, we not only confirmed the structure of these factors, but were also able to model them with several other traditional and non-traditional socioeconomic factors. The final model suggests that differences in Parent Educational Involvement, Household Educational Resources, and School Hindrances across the sample are an outcome of broader socioeconomic inequality driven by racism, sexism, and classism. This paper discusses the development of this model, our findings, and potential implications for future research, including our larger project which uses the measure to predict engineering student application to, and enrollment and persistence in, engineering.

Citation
Format

Major, J. C., & Godwin, A. (2025, February), Development of a measure of intersectional socioeconomic inequality that extends beyond income Paper presented at 2025 Collaborative Network for Engineering & Computing Diversity (CoNECD), San Antonio, Texas. 10.18260/1-2--54079

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - In this research paper, we describe our initial development of a holistic measure of intersectional socioeconomic inequality that accounts for both the inequalities that lead to and stem from differences in income, impacting (non)engineering students in and out of the classroom. 

Low-income students’, henceforth referred to as socioeconomically disadvantaged students (SDS), challenges traversing engineering extend beyond their access to income specifically. Research suggests that SDS, especially those from multi-marginalized groups, are impacted by various overlapping forms of (non)socioeconomic inequality. This overlap leads to unequal access to resources and experience that, otherwise, supports STEM success. However, traditional socioeconomic measures do not reflect realities of inequality, instead measures focus on income or capital which are bare of these relationships. Yet, how socioeconomic disadvantage is defined alters how SDS are impacted by policy (e.g., financial aid), including how researchers and practitioners create a more equitable engineering education (Atwood et al., 2020). Thus, a measure that accounts for the complex processes that lead to resource deprivation is needed.

In this work, we consider inequalities that impact students and members of their communities amongst their home, neighborhood, and school environments, hypothesizing that these inequalities come together to create an “ecosystem of disadvantage” that adversely impacts SDS. Our process and final measure reflect this existence. To develop the measure, we obtained restricted-access to the US National Center for Education Statistics’ Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002) which tracked the trajectories of 16,200 (non)engineering students from their 10th grade year in high school (2002) to their 8th year out of high school (2012). The restricted-access set contains finite geographic, demographic, and occupational data which we used to ascertain a more nuanced valuation of students’ various socioeconomics. Such nuance was determined by pairing the data with publicly available statistics from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census Bureau, and Departments of Agriculture and Education, and statistics from the American Association of University Women. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used to identify potential underlying factors amongst the socioeconomic data. Thereafter, structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to confirm the structure of the latent factors, and to model latent variables and relationships to other socioeconomic variables in tandem. 

Using EFA, we identified that three latent factors, Parent Educational Involvement, Household Educational Resources, and School Hindrances existed that could be used to better describe students’ experiences in STEM. Using SEM, we not only confirmed the structure of these factors, but were also able to model them with several other traditional and non-traditional socioeconomic factors. The final model suggests that differences in Parent Educational Involvement, Household Educational Resources, and School Hindrances across the sample are an outcome of broader socioeconomic inequality driven by racism, sexism, and classism. This paper discusses the development of this model, our findings, and potential implications for future research, including our larger project which uses the measure to predict engineering student application to, and enrollment and persistence in, engineering.

AU  - Justin Charles Major
AU  - Allison Godwin
CY  - San Antonio, Texas
DA  - 2025/02/09
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Development of a measure of intersectional socioeconomic inequality that extends beyond income
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/54079
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--54079
ER  -