Examining Motivator Factors of STEM Undergraduate Persistence through Two-Factor Theory

ABSTRACT

This study investigates undergraduate STEM persistence through two-factor theory. Using nationally representative data and multinomial regression, we conceptualize known determinants of persistence as hygiene and motivator factors to test the persistence outcomes among college students who majored in STEM: earning a STEM degree, non-STEM degree, and degree non-completion. We propose that hygiene factors provide a baseline means of persistence in higher education, whereas the motivator factors improve the probability of student persistence in STEM majors. Our findings demonstrated that motivator factors improve the persistence model when added to hygiene factors. Hygiene factors were generally associated with STEM persistence by staying in college, while motivator factors mostly predicted persistence by remaining in the STEM major. Given the importance of motivator factors, we also tested the differential relationship between motivator factors and student persistence in STEM majors by gender and race/ethnicity due to underrepresentation in STEM fields.

KEYWORDS:

• STEM
• college student persistence
• women
• underrepresented students
• two-factor theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. We found significance for two additional interaction terms, however, both had insufficient samples sizes which may lead the estimation to be unreliable. The Hispanic and service-learning interaction term was found significant (RRR = .10, p < .05), and significantly improved the model (F =2,710.4, p < .05). However, there were only 103 Hispanic students in the sample before multiple imputation, 17 of whom participated in service-learning. Other race and mentorship interaction term was also significant (RRR = 28.96, p < .05) and showed a significant improvement of the model (F = 2,388.3, p < .05). However, only 55 students were represented by the other race category, eight of whom experienced mentorship.