Questionnaire with university students on STEM studies in Higher Education (QSTEMHE)

Abstract

In some countries, there is gender segregation in some fields of study, one case being the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) sector. For this reason, the Questionnaire with university students on STEM studies in Higher Education (QSTEMHE) has been designed. The instrument has been empirically validated (Verdugo-Castro et al., 2022b). It is part of the research carried out through Sonia Verdugo-Castro's doctoral thesis at the University of Salamanca (Verdugo-Castro, 2022). The objective pursued with the application of the QSTEMHE questionnaire is to find out the gender stereotypes that university students have about higher STEM studies once the factors that affect this gender gap have been identified (Verdugo-Castro, García-Holgado, et al., 2023). The questionnaire is composed of four blocks, two of which contain socio-demographic and contextual questions, another contains open questions (Verdugo-Castro, Sánchez-Gómez, et al., 2023) and another block contains items in which statements are made to which one must respond with the degree of agreement or disagreement about the opinion that one has as a university student about higher studies related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Verdugo-Castro et al., 2020, 2022a). The dimensions to which the validated opinion items are associated are Gender Ideology (D3), Interests (D1), Attitudes (D4), Perception and Self-perception (D2) and Expectations about Science (D5) (Verdugo-Castro et al., 2022b). Concerning some questions linked to gender, the research has been approached with respect and inclusion of the different gender identities, knowing that gender is not limited to the binary classification of male and female. However, some questions refer to men and women due to the historical tendency of segregation between the two genders in the field of study. In the application of the questionnaire in the framework of the doctoral thesis of Sonia Verdugo-Castro (Verdugo-Castro, 2022), the data obtained have been processed in an aggregated and anonymous way once the favourable report of the Bioethics Committee (CBE) of the University of Salamanca has been obtained, with registration number 557. Finally, some items have been deleted since the instrument has been subjected to validation procedures. For this reason, in this final version presented, next to the codes identifying each item, in some of them, there is a reference in italics and in grey, in brackets, which is associated with the identifying values of the questionnaire in its first version.