Gender Issues in Studying CS - Balkan Perspective Mirjana Ivanovic, Zoran Budimac, Zoran Putnik, Nikola Trkulja 10th Workshop

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Gender Issues in Studying CS - Balkan
PerspectiveMirjana Ivanovic, Zoran
Budimac,Zoran Putnik, Nikola Trkulja 10th
Workshop Software Engineering Education and
Reverse Engineering, Ivanjica, September 2010
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AGENDA

• Goals of the research and motivation
• Questionnaire Structure, Participants
• Questionnaire Data Processing, Results
• Further Plans and Activities
• Conclusion

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Goals of the research

• Inspired by results presented at DAAD WS 2008
• Exploring male/female undergraduate CS students
• General success rate
• Professional confidence, ambitions and interests
• Level of satisfaction with the choice of studies
• Attitudes and beliefs towards the gender issue

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Motivation

• Take into consideration and compare male/female
  opinion
• Considerable lack of female students at
  universities worldwide, despite the different
  supporting acts made by academic community
• Find reasons for inadequate involvement of women
  in IT industry and research in Balkan region by
  exploring both male and female opinions
• Express key findings and give some useful
  suggestions in order to improve situation

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AGENDA

• Goals of the research and motivation
• Questionnaire Structure, Participants
• Questionnaire Data Processing, Results
• Further Plans and Activities
• Conclusion

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Questionnaire Structure

• Questionnaire consisted of about hundred
  questions.
• Divided into three main sections
• General data
• Motivation for enrollment
• Ambitions regarding future career
• There were two type of questions
• Nominal scale questions (yes/no)
• Ordinal scale questions (1 to 5 Lickert scale)

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Questionnaire General data section

• Students were asked questions like
• Average mark?
• Are you more comfortable with CS-related, than
  with math-related courses?
• Do you feel worried about your future career in
  the field of CS?
• Rate the quality of studies on various points?
• During your studies, have you felt as part of
  academic community?
• Rate your skills in each of the listed aspects?
• Which grade did you achieve in the various
  courses?

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Questionnaire Motivation for enrollment

• Students were asked questions like
• How did the following factors influence your
  decision to enroll this faculty?
• Which of listed fields should be covered with
  more courses?
• Role-models which inspired you to study CS?
• Do you plan to continue you education with master
  studies?

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Questionnaire Ambitions regarding future
career

• Students were asked questions like
• On which job position from the list do you see
  yourself after completion of studies?
• On which job position do you see yourself in 10
  years?
• Point out which fields of CS overall promise the
  most?

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Questionnaire Participants
We want to thank to all our collegues who helped
us with data collection in their countries
State Gender Female Male
Albania 11 13
Serbia 42 66
Macedonia 58 114
Bosnia and Herzegovina 20 31
Total 131 224
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AGENDA

• Goals of the research and motivation
• Questionnaire Structure, Participants
• Questionnaire Data Processing, Results
• Further Plans and Activities
• Conclusion

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Questionnaire Data Processing

• All data processing was done using R environment
  for statistical computing and graphics.
• Various non-parametric technics were applied
• Nominal scale data was analysed using Fisher
  exact test and Phi association coefficient.
• Lickert scale data was analysed using
  MannWhitneyWilcoxon test, and Freemans Theta
  coefficient.
• Emphasis was put on finding associations between
  gender and some other question.

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Questionnaire Results

• Do you expect to have a successful career in the
  field of CS?

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Questionnaire Results

• Are you more comfortable with CS-related, than
  with math-related courses?
• Female students
• prefer math
• related courses.

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Questionnaire Results

• Do you think studies positively influence your
  intellectual development?
• More male students
• think it did not.

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Questionnaire Results

• Rate quality of CS courses?
• p value 0.81
• What about Math courses?

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Questionnaire Results

• Rate quality of Math courses?
• p value 0.000573
• Maybe not so clear from these charts, but female
  students rate Math courses higher.

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Questionnaire Results

• How did interest in computers influence your
  decision to enroll this faculty ?

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Questionnaire Results

• How did parents influence your decision to enroll
  this faculty ?

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Questionnaire Results

• In order to prepare for successful career in CS,
  do you think there should be more electronics
  courses?

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Questionnaire Results

• Please rate knowledge of informatics of female
  teachers?
• p value 10e-6

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Questionnaire Results

• Please rate knowledge of informatics of male
  teachers?
• p value 0.005

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Questionnaire Results

• Is Computer Science good field for women?

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Questionnaire Results

• Is Computer Science good field for men?

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Questionnaire Results

• Do you consider there is a lack of women in CS ?
• p value lt 0.05

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Questionnaire Results

• In CS, women tend to be more careful than men?
• p value is
• almost 0.

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AGENDA

• Goals of the research and motivation
• Questionnaire Structure, Participants
• Questionnaire Data Processing, Results
• Further Plans and Activities
• Conclusion

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Further Plans and Activities

• Add more countries into the research
• Conduct statistical tests for each country, and
  found out if there is significant differences
  beetwen countries.
• Also find correlations beetwen answers on some
  pairs of lickert scale questions.
• Interpret computed statistics and work towards
  writing a paper on this subject.

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AGENDA

• Goals of the research and motivation
• Questionnaire Structure, Participants
• Questionnaire Data Processing, Results
• Further Plans and Activities
• Conclusion

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Conclusion

• Present satisfaction with the choice of studies
• Participants expressed serious and ambitious
  attitudes regarding their career objectives
• Female students are little bit more ambitious,
  maybe because their male collegues do not fully
  recognize their hard work.
• Some number of male students think that they can
  do pretty much anything better then females.

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Thank you for your attention You are welcome
to ask questions?