ICT Interventions for Girls: Factors Influencing ICT Career Intentions

Gorbacheva Elena, Craig Annemieke, Beekhuyzen Jenine, Coldwell-Neilson Jo


Abstract
Intervention programs aimed at promoting study and work opportunities in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) field to schoolgirls have been encouraged to combat a decline in the interest among girls to study ICT at school. The goal of our study is to investigate the influence of such interventions on schoolgirls' intentions to choose a career in the ICT field by analysing comprehensive survey data (n = 3711), collected during four interventions in Australia, using the Partial Least Squares method. Our study is also aimed at identifying other factors influencing ICT career intentions. We found that the attitude towards interventions has an indirect influence on ICT career intentions by affecting interest in ICT. Our results also challenge several existing theoretical studies by showing that factors that had previously been suggested as influencers were found to have little or no impact in this study, these being same-sex education and computer usage.

Keywords
Intervention; Girls and ICT; Gender diversity



Publication type
Research article (journal)

Peer reviewed
Yes

Publication status
Published

Year
2014

Journal
Australasian Journal of Information Systems (AJIS)

Volume
18

Issue
3

Start page
289

End page
302

Language
English

ISSN
1449-8618