Alignment of goals and perceptions of computing predicts students’ sense of belonging in computing

Abstract

The lack of diversity has been a troubling issue for the field of computing. As the industry continues to expand, it is imperative that diversity levels in computing fields increase to fill the ever-growing number of computing jobs and to represent the technological needs of a diverse populace. Our research seeks to better understand the factors that lead to this lack of diversity by analyzing data from computing majors from colleges within the United States and Canada. Our study reveals that students of different demographic backgrounds have varying levels of communal values, which, depending on how they perceive the affordance of computing to fulfill such values, predict their sense of belonging in computing, which is an important predictor of student retention.