Promoting Persistence in the Biological and Medical Sciences: An Expectancy-Value Approach to Intervention

A wide range of occupations require science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) skills, yet almost half of students who intend to pursue a post-secondary STEM education abandon these plans before graduating from college. This attrition is especially pronounced among underrepresented groups (i.e., racial/ethnic minorities and first-generation college students). We conducted a two-year follow-up of a utility-value intervention that had been implemented in an introductory biology course. This intervention was previously shown to improve performance in the course, on average and especially among underrepresented students, reducing the achievement gap. The goal of the present study was to examine whether the intervention also impacted persistence in the biomedical track throughout college. The intervention had a more positive impact on long-term persistence for students who were more confident that they could succeed at the beginning of the course, and this effect was partially driven by the extent to which students reflected on the personal relevance of biological topics in their essays. This mechanism was distinct from the process that had been found to underlie intervention effects on performance - engagement with course material - suggesting that utility-value interventions may affect different academic outcomes by initiating distinct psychological processes. Although we did not find that the intervention was differentially effective for underrepresented students in terms of persistence, we found that positive effects on performance were associated with increased persistence for these students. Results suggest that utility-value interventions in an introductory course can be an effective strategy to promote persistence in the biomedical sciences throughout college.