The Relationship Between Perceived Confidence, Gender, and Writing in a Biomedical Engineering REU Site

Women frequently feel alienated in STEM environments due to gender biases, ultimately leading them to feel less competent or leave the field altogether. This study utilizes personal statements from a subset of participants from a National Science Foundation funded Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Site: Biomedical Engineering in Simulations, Imaging, and Modeling (BME-SIM) to investigate how confidence is shown by participants and how confidence is perceived by faculty reviewers in personal statements. This study compares feedback from faculty reviewers to perceived and self-reported confidence using lexical (i.e., word choices and use) and syntactic (i.e., structures of language segments such as sentences, phrases, organization of words) features of these personal statements. Women received more negative feedback related to confidence compared to their male counterparts, notably in relation to modesty. Few differences were found between writing styles of genders in their pre- and post-program statements. Overall, writing styles did not seem to correlate with the genders' perceived or self-reported confidence; however, perception of confidence suggested a relationship between genders' pre- and post-program statements when examined by noun and adjective variation. A similar relationship was found between self-reported confidence and noun variation in men and women participants. Findings suggest that writing style perceptions and practices may be influenced by gender norms; however, without looking at the specific diction and content of personal statements, these conclusions cannot be fully established.