ArticleScience advances2020
A psychological intervention strengthens students' peer social networks and promotes persistence in STEM.
Article in Science advances, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- Elevating scientific training by building a Research Alliance for Inclusive STEM Education (RAISE).Journal of microbiology & biology education · 2026Article
- Quality over quantity: joint group dance strengthens schoolchildren's social connections and wellbeing.Frontiers in cognition · 2026Article
- Mind the (Social and Emotional Competence) Gap to Support Higher Education Students' Well-Being: Psychometric Properties of the SECAB-A(S).European journal of investigation in health, psychology and education · 2025Article
- Effectiveness of Self-Affirmation Interventions in Educational Settings: A Meta-Analysis.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Ten simple rules for students navigating summer research experiences for undergraduates (REU) programs: From application to program completion.PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
- Information, partisanship, and preferences in a pandemic.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- Ten simple rules for creating a global network in computational biology.PLoS computational biology · 2022Article
- STEM learning communities promote friendships but risk academic segmentation.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- How an Early, Inclusive Field Course can Build Persistence in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.Integrative and comparative biology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Retaining students in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields is critical as demand for STEM graduates increases. Whereas many approaches to improve persistence target individuals' internal beliefs, skills, and traits, the intervention in this experiment strengthened students' peer social networks to help them persevere. Students in a gateway biology course were randomly assigned to complete a control or values affirmation exercise, a psychological intervention hypothesized to have positive social effects. By the end of the term, affirmed students had an estimated 29% more friends in the course on average than controls. Affirmation also prompted structural changes in students' network positions such that affirmed students were more central in the overall course friendship network. These differing social trajectories predicted STEM persistence: Affirmed students were 11.7 percentage points more likely than controls to take the next course in the bioscience sequence, an effect that was statistically mediated by students' end-of-semester friendships.
Identifiers
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.