A multi-year science research or engineering experience in high school gives women confidence to continue in the STEM pipeline or seek advancement in other fields: A 20-year longitudinal study

Patricia K. Hunt; Michelle Dong; Crystal M. Miller

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0258717

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionNovember 5, 2020
14 Dec 2020 Decision Letter - Andrew R. Dalby, Editor PONE-D-20-34867 A multi-year science research or engineering experience in high school gives women the confidence for future S&E occupations and advancement: A 20-year longitudinal study PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Miller, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. You need to address the issues regarding the statistical analysis of the data and the presentation of the results. It is important that you make sure that there is clarity in how they are presented and that this fits with your hypothesis. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 28 2021 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Andrew R. Dalby, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. We note that you have indicated that data from this study are available upon request. PLOS only allows data to be available upon request if there are legal or ethical restrictions on sharing data publicly. For more information on unacceptable data access restrictions, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. In your revised cover letter, please address the following prompts: a) If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially sensitive information, data are owned by a third-party organization, etc.) and who has imposed them (e.g., an ethics committee). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent. b) If there are no restrictions, please upload the minimal anonymized data set necessary to replicate your study findings as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. We will update your Data Availability statement on your behalf to reflect the information you provide. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Partly Reviewer #2: No ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: N/A Reviewer #2: No ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: It is impressive result the SREP graduates are awarded more S&E degree than the national female average. The result looks clear and teachers’ long-term efforts is wonderful, but there are several lack of description and analysis. 1.First, more data of SREP at the school is needed. There are 619 SREP projects, at least, the author should classify and add projects’ field % like Table 2. The SREP graduates ration in the “Biological/agricultural sciences” and “Engineering” are awarded more than the average, it should be discussed the relation between the project fields. 2.Not only the projects’ field, but also the more detail about the SREP program should be discussed. The actual situation cannot be seen, such as how the teachers prepared the project, negotiated, and how much they were involved in the operation. 3. The discussion is needed how the options in Fig 5 were selected. These items should be discussed in combination with the SREP design concept. 4.Overall results and discussions are not clearly separated. Especially since it is a treatise and not an article, it is not suitable to write a conclusion in the subsection title. Reviewer #2: Lines 44-45: should say: while men and women students… equal numbers… Line 56: is it a private school or charter school? I am not sure what an “independent school” is? Line 80-81: If they have comparable aspirations, why would girls reference careers requiring college and boys would not? This is not clear. Line 82: This also seems contradictory: if scores are equal, how could they favor boys? There is obviously a lot of nuance in this literature and I think the precision of the writing needs to be improved in this section of the paper. Lines 190-200: SREP sounds amazing. I think we need more details about how the program fit within their high school coursework (during the week, did they go to the lab during school day?) In the summer, were they paid or just volunteers? More importantly (in terms of a selection bias issue): How were students selected for it? What are the sociodemographics of the student body at this school and in SREP? (Line 274 is too late for this info to appear. The info is also vague there—report actual percentages). I think the authors should pose research questions at the end of the introduction. Without doing that, it is hard to see how the different data sources and variables are going to be used (on pages 9-11). For example, I don’t know how supplemental survey which 25% of the cases responded too will be used. In the data section, the authors also do not introduce how they will determine the control group or control population. Line 263 mentions some sources, but not specifically what they are and how they are used. Line 261: The statistics section does not discuss any actual statistical approaches. What tests are used? Line 268: The authors report that their alumni are not nationally representative, but they need to actually show the reader how they diverge from national stats so that we can use that information to evaluate the comparisons. So compare actual percentages between groups. Line 271: says that the purpose is to assess SREP as a model. It seems very late in the paper to be stating that as the goal. Also, is that what the analyses really achieve? In lines 278-9: another goal is stated. The paper should have one goal (or a set of related goals) and it should be introduced early in the paper and then the analyses should support that goal). Section at Line 282: This does not seem to be results, it seems like background on the program, I would move it back to the section on SREP, unless you create new research questions that include this as one of the questions. Line 305: This heading seems to be one of the key research questions. Pose it earlier.! Line 316: Is there a way to get these national stats for white and Asian women alone? Since we know that minority students are less likely to go into STEM careers, the national averages are lower than they would be for the group of students from this school. There might be better comparison stats than national averages when your students are not nationally representative. Line 361: What does being “more firmly committed” mean? I would recommend just using language about switching majors in the headings for clarity. Line 377-378: I am not convinced that that gap could not be explained by the SES and race/ethnicity differences between the students in your sample and the national averages. I would recommend posing a series of research questions (at the end of the intro) that lead the reader through the results. Line 568: The issues of selection bias in this paper are HUGE and since those who do STREP are not representative in any way, I am just convinced that the national stats are the right comparison group. I think they could be utilized in the paper, but I don’t think they should be the featured story since the HB alumnae are not even close to representative (this was not reported directly, but I assume this, based on what the authors reported in the paper). One better comparison group would be HB students who did not do STREP. I don’t see why (line 582) this group could not have been made available. That does not make sense to me, given that the study is already using alumni records. (If indeed that is the case, this should be better explained.) The paper has a really cool set of data and I like it in many ways, but it is fundamentally flawed. Research looking at this question about the impact of program participation on STEM trajectories would use propensity score matching to match each SREP student with controls, conduct multivariate stats, and then that would isolate the effect of SREP on their trajectory and you could really say that it helped and by how much it helped. In the absence of that, it seems like making multiple comparisons is probably best. Comparing local stats for the community/city in which HB is located, comparing by race/ethnicity nationally, comparing to national averages, etc. Comparing to national statistics only is not very meaningful, given that it appears this group is quite a bit more affluent and advantaged than the average American woman. One possibility is to look at all the stats by race, so find national stats for white woman and Asian women and compare to them. However, since those stats for the HB alumni were not reported, I cannot provide definitive advice here on how to move forward. The current approach is problematic. The tables and figures are missing captions and notes. The reader needs to know the N of the groups and the source of the data in all of them. I also think basic tables are missing, such as descriptive stats on the HB alumni group (and how they compare to national stats, if those stats are used). ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review?** For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258717.r001
Revision 1
9 Jun 2021 Author Response REVIEWER 1 1. First, more data of SREP at the school is needed. There are 619 SREP projects, at least, the author should classify and add projects’ field % like table 2. The SREP graduates ration in the “biological/agricultural sciences” and “engineering” are awarded more than the average, it should be discussed the relation between the project fields. Figure 1 has been converted to Table 1 (Lines 270-279, Table 1) and moved to the Methods under the “Program description” subsection to classify the project field in a similar way to the majors in Table 2. 2. Not only the projects’ field, but also the more detail about the SREP program should be discussed. The actual situation cannot be seen, such as how the teachers prepared the project, negotiated, and how much they were involved in the operation. The authors agree that information was lacking and have expanded on the “Program description” subsection (Lines 222-279) to include the details of how this program works and expand on the information about participants, how placements were established and the role of the Research Director, students, and curriculum. 3. The discussion is needed how the options in fig 5 were selected. These items should be discussed in combination with the SREP design concept. The authors have added a “Purpose of the study” subsection to the Introduction to address how the perceived character qualities that students feel they have gained through their participation in the SREP have potentially impacted the outcome (Line 263-268). In addition, these particular skills sets are called out in the “Program description” (Line 229-232 & 237-240) to explain how they are incorporated as learning objectives. 4. Overall results and discussions are not clearly separated. Especially since it is a treatise and not an article, it is not suitable to write a conclusion in the subsection title. The authors appreciate this observation and have relocated or removed the sections of text in the results that were more suited for the discussion (Lines 413-420, 439-441, 456-463, 483-486, 507-509, 546-551, 583-584, 602-605). The Conclusions section is also no longer a subsection, but a main section (Line 750). REVIEWER 2 Lines 44-45: should say: while men and women students… equal numbers… Corrected. (Line 46-47) Line 56: is it a private school or charter school? I am not sure what an “independent school” is? Revised. An independent school is a subcategory of private school, but private is familiar and will suffice here. (Line 59) Line 80-81: if they have comparable aspirations, why would girls reference careers requiring college and boys would not? This is not clear. The authors agree that this statement and entire paragraph is problematic. After consideration, the paragraph has been removed (Lines 142-147) as it attempted to briefly address elementary and middle school stages of the STEM pipeline, but, as the reviewer rightly observes, there is nuance in the literature that cannot be adequately summarized in a short paragraph. This entire section has been rearranged to focus on the high school experience as it impacts the STEM pipeline and excludes discussion of earlier timepoints. (Lines 128-157). Line 82: this also seems contradictory: if scores are equal, how could they favor boys? There is obviously a lot of nuance in this literature and i think the precision of the writing needs to be improved in this section of the paper. See above Lines 190-200: SREP sounds amazing. I think we need more details about how the program fit within their high school coursework (during the week, did they go to the lab during school day?) In the summer, were they paid or just volunteers? The authors agree that information was lacking and have expanded on the “Program description” subsection under the Methods to include further details including relation to coursework, logistics of time, and compensation (Lines 222-268). More importantly (in terms of a selection bias issue): how were students selected for it? A selection system does introduce additional selection bias. The requirements of the program have been detailed as well as alternative options (Lines 242-254). What are the sociodemographics of the student body at this school and in SREP? (line 274 is too late for this info to appear. The info is also vague there—report actual percentages). The authors have added available percentage data under Methods and the “Sources” subsection (Line 302-330, Table 2) to include the details on the race/ethnicity of the HB student body and those who participated in SREP. As noted (Line 298-300) HB does not collect information on household income, guardian educational background, or family structure so these demographics were unavailable. I think the authors should pose research questions at the end of the introduction. Without doing that, it is hard to see how the different data sources and variables are going to be used (on pages 9-11). For example, i don’t know how supplemental survey which 25% of the cases responded too will be used. A “Purpose of the study” subsection has been added to the Introduction to pose research questions and goals of the study (Line 187-214). In the data section, the authors also do not introduce how they will determine the control group or control population. Line 263 mentions some sources, but not specifically what they are and how they are used. The “Sources” subsection of the Methods has been expanded and now includes information on HB Non-SREP students as controls and lists the publicly accessible databases and tables that were used for comparison groups for each analysis (Line 355, Table 3). Line 268: the authors report that their alumni are not nationally representative, but they need to actually show the reader how they diverge from national stats so that we can use that information to evaluate the comparisons. So compare actual percentages between groups. The authors have acquired all demographic data available for HB SREP and Non-SREP students and have added available percentage data under Methods and the “Sources” subsection (Line 302-330) to include the details on the race/ethnicity. As noted in (Line 298-300) HB does not collect information on household income, guardian educational background, or family structure so these demographics were unavailable. Line 271: says that the purpose is to assess SREP as a model. It seems very late in the paper to be stating that as the goal. Also, is that what the analyses really achieve? In lines 278-9: another goal is stated. The paper should have one goal (or a set of related goals) and it should be introduced early in the paper and then the analyses should support that goal). Authors agree that the goals stated throughout the paper appeared disparate and unrelated and need fine-tuned. Lines 403-408 (previously 278-9) have been removed and reworded in a “Purpose of the study” subsection in the Introduction that ties the educational and occupational outcomes assessed to the skill sets learned through the SREP to link bridging the confidence gap to a reduction in leakage in the STEM pipeline (Line 187-214). Section at line 282: this does not seem to be results, it seems like background on the program, i would move it back to the section on srep, unless you create new research questions that include this as one of the questions. Discipline dispersal in the SREP has been converted from Figure 1 to Table 1 (Line 270-279) and moved to the Methods under the “Program description” subsection to help characterize the SREP. Line 305: this heading seems to be one of the key research questions. Pose it earlier.! Key research questions have been streamlined and related to achieve one overall goal. The research question is now posed earlier within the “Purpose of the study” subsection in the Introduction (Line 187-214). Line 316: is there a way to get these national stats for white and asian women alone? Since we know that minority students are less likely to go into stem careers, the national averages are lower than they would be for the group of students from this school. There might be better comparison stats than national averages when your students are not nationally representative. The authors appreciate the reviewer’s ideas and expertise on how to address the lack of ideal controls in this study. The authors have reviewed the publicly available databases and have added White female and Asian female subgroups as a better comparison than the national averages as suggested in all analyses possible (Lines 326-300). National averages were retained for wholistic comparisons. Line 361: what does being “more firmly committed” mean? I would recommend just using language about switching majors in the headings for clarity. The language here is was unnecessarily confusing and the authors appreciate your recommendation for clarification. The wording has been changed to include switching majors (Line 479-482). Line 377-378: i am not convinced that that gap could not be explained by the ses and race/ethnicity differences between the students in your sample and the national averages. The authors agree that this is a limitation of the study and have addressed the race/ethnicity differences by including demographic data on HB students (Table 2) and comparing to subgroups of White women and Asian women as a closer comparison. Unfortunately, HB does not keep records on SES (Line 297-300) and therefore this variable cannot be specifically controlled. I would recommend posing a series of research questions (at the end of the intro) that lead the reader through the results. Key research questions have been streamlined and related to achieve one overall goal. The research questions are now posed earlier within the “Purpose of the study” subsection at the end of the Introduction (Line 187-214). Line 568: the issues of selection bias in this paper are huge and since those who do srep are not representative in any way, i am just convinced that the national stats are the right comparison group. I think they could be utilized in the paper, but i don’t think they should be the featured story since the hb alumnae are not even close to representative (this was not reported directly, but i assume this, based on what the authors reported in the paper). The authors recognize the selection bias and have tried to be transparent about the issues in the Limitations section (Lines 733-748). We have also now included comparisons to HB Non-SREP students in all cases where there was data available (Table 2, Table 4, Fig 3) to do so. One better comparison group would be hb students who did not do srep. I don’t see why (line 582) this group could not have been made available. That does not make sense to me, given that the study is already using alumni records. (if indeed that is the case, this should be better explained.) We have included comparisons to HB Non-SREP students in all cases where there was data available including demographics (Table 2), college majors awarded (Table 4)., advanced degrees (Fig 3A), and occupations (Fig 3B) and have explained why data is not available for other comparisons (Line 297-300). The paper has a really cool set of data and i like it in many ways, but it is fundamentally flawed. Research looking at this question about the impact of program participation on stem trajectories would use propensity score matching to match each srep student with controls, conduct multivariate stats, and then that would isolate the effect of srep on their trajectory and you could really say that it helped and by how much it helped. In the absence of that, it seems like making multiple comparisons is probably best. Comparing local stats for the community/city in which hb is located, comparing by race/ethnicity nationally, comparing to national averages, etc. The authors fully agree and would have preferred to use propensity score matching; however, as the data necessary for this type of statistical analysis is not available and cannot be collected retrospectively, the use of proportion test was the best fit (Line 392-394). We appreciate your recommendation on alternative options given the circumstance. While we have kept the comparisons to national averages, we have used HB demographics to identify that our SREP group has a higher representation of Whites and Asians (Line 302-330, Table 2) and are therefore now including comparisons to national averages for White women and Asian women for as many analyses as possible (Table 2, Fig 1, Table 4, Fig 3). Community/city averages were not available. Comparing to national statistics only is not very meaningful, given that it appears this group is quite a bit more affluent and advantaged than the average american woman. One possibility is to look at all the stats by race, so find national stats for white woman and asian women and compare to them. However, since those stats for the hb alumni were not reported, i cannot provide definitive advice here on how to move forward. The current approach is problematic. All HB demographics that were available were pulled to identify representation in HB and within the HB SREP (Table 2). As there is a higher representation of Whites and Asians compared to the national population, we have included comparisons to national averages for White women and Asian women for as many analyses as possible (Line 328-330). The tables and figures are missing captions and notes. The reader needs to know the n of the groups and the source of the data in all of them. I also think basic tables are missing, such as descriptive stats on the hb alumni group (and how they compare to national stats, if those stats are used). Apologies for the missing captions and notes. Notes for tables and captions for figures were included within the document and figures were separate as instructed for submission. However, additional notes and sample size values have been added where they were missing previously. Table 2 was also added which includes the race/ethnicity demographics of the HB SREP and Non-SREP populations compared to the national population. Table 3 was added to summarize where all national stats originate and where they are used. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258717.r002
5 Oct 2021 Decision Letter - Andrew R. Dalby, Editor A multi-year science research or engineering experience in high school gives women confidence to continue in the STEM pipeline or seek advancement in other fields: A 20-year longitudinal study PONE-D-20-34867R1 Dear Dr. Miller, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Andrew R. Dalby, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258717.r003
Formally Accepted
8 Oct 2021 Acceptance Letter - Andrew R. Dalby, Editor PONE-D-20-34867R1 A multi-year science research or engineering experience in high school gives women confidence to continue in the STEM pipeline or seek advancement in other fields: A 20-year longitudinal study Dear Dr. Miller: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Andrew R. Dalby Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258717.r004

Open letter on the publication of peer review reports

PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.

We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.

Learn more at ASAPbio .