The Effect Of Stereotype Threat On Women's Performance On The Fundamentals Of Engineering Exam

Recent research has demonstrated that stereotype threat-the concern that others will view one stereotypically-interferes with women's performance on standardized math exams. This exam is the first step in the process to become a licensed professional engineer. Sophomore and junior women and men engineering students completed one of two tests where the test questions were a subset of previous FEE questions. One test was comprised of primarily difficult questions while the other was made up of mostly easy questions. From a stereotype threat perspective, a student's concern about being stereotyped by others should be highest when two factors are at play: (i) the student is performing poorly (e.g. the questions are difficult); and, (ii) a stereotype might be applied to the student (e.g. the stereotype that women are not good at math). Based on previous research, it is in this situation that differences between men's and women's performance should emerge. The data in this study are consistent with this perspective: gender differences were evident only on difficult engineering questions after the engineering area expertise factor was controlled (i.e. normalized).