Stem Friends: Friendships and STEM interest

Discovering the role that 4^th and 5th-grade friendships have to play in children’s STEM interest

Most parents understand that their child’s friendships hold great influence on their perceptions, hobbies, and interests – but today, our Data Scientist, David Meier, provides us with some interesting evidence that demonstrates how your children’s friends feel about STEM may greatly impact your own child’s STEM interest!

Interesting results emerged when we analyzed data from our Camp Invention Research Project: Institute for Learning Innovation study regarding what STEM areas girls and boys enjoy learning about. Using a five-point rating scale with five being the highest, we asked 485 fourth and fifth-grade Camp Invention participants how much they liked finding out about or learning about various STEM topics. These topics were selected to measure interest in three main STEM areas: Life Science, Earth Science, and Technology and Engineering.

Utilizing T-Tests, we found that the 209 girls liked finding out about Life Science more than the 276 boys (average rating of 3.69 to 3.37) and that the boys liked finding out about Technology and Engineering more than the girls (average rating of 4.18 to 3.98).

While this finding may not be overly surprising to some people, what we found particularly interesting is that no statistically significant difference was found between the reported liking of finding out about Earth Science between the girls and the boys (average rating of 4.15 and 4.00).

We also asked the participants to rate their agreement to the question, “My friends think science and engineering are cool.”

Utilizing regression models, we found there to be a statistically significant and positive relationship between a participant’s friends thinking science and engineering are cool and their own enjoyment in finding out about all three of the STEM areas!

Interestingly, while no difference in the average rating for liking learning about Earth Science was found between the girls and the boys, the relationship between girls’ friends thinking science and engineering is cool and their rating of liking finding out about Earth Science was stronger than for the boys.

Indeed, for the girls, we found that for every one-unit increase in the rating of their friends’ thinking science and engineering is cool we could predict a corresponding increase of .21 units in their own rating of liking finding out about Earth Science (the predicted increase for the boys was .19 units).

While the statistical tests we utilized don’t prove causation, their statistically significant and predictive quality provides us evidence that there definitely is a positive relationship between friends’ attitudes towards science and engineering and a child’s own enjoyment in finding out about Life Science, Earth Science, and Technology and Engineering.

Parents, have you found this to be displayed in your own children’s friendships?

For more information on these findings, feel free to contact Data Scientist, David Meier.

Posted Mar 30, 2022