2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Literature Adventures with Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count

Presented at Exploration of Written and Team Communication

Background: One way to broaden the participation of women in engineering beyond the commonly reported 20% proportion of degrees awarded is through providing outreach (e.g., enrichment programs) for young learners. Yet, we do not know the full impact of outreach, especially how it impacts persistence and engineering identity (eID) among girls, because these enrichment programs often happen in silos. Therefore, with the fast propagation of engineering education (EnEd) research, there is a need to quickly evaluate relevant research to identify gaps in our knowledge of eID development via outreach.
Purpose: A traditional (i.e., by hand) thematic literature review was conducted as a part of an ongoing study on Middle School outreach, eID, and persistence for women in engineering. However, we wanted to understand the viability and accuracy of a computer-driven analysis, Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), as a resource for fast, reliable analysis of literature.
Scope/Method: The program LIWC was used as an analysis tool to quickly gather data on a set of six literature review papers, with both user-defined and built-in dictionaries, as well as a topic modeling procedure, to refine the methodology for this novel approach.
Results: The use of LIWC to conduct a thematic literature review on a subset of articles confirmed the same themes that arrive via traditional coding methods , yet the novel computational method took less time and offered a few surprises. Thus, a priori codes using traditional LIWC analysis, with both the standard dictionary and our custom dictionary, and in vivo codes using LIWC meaning extraction method (MEM analysis), allowed us to quickly analyze how many papers used the same terms.
Conclusions: While the available computational tools allow us to quickly focus on the most salient of themes in the literature and come to inter-rater consistency faster, its use does not replace the need to read. Novel tools like LIWC might be the future for rapidly understanding the language of EnEd research and could help researchers more easily categorize prior research in their areas.

Authors

Ms. Kristin L. Schaefer P.E. http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5945-1485 UH [biography]

Kristin Luthringer Schaefer is a licensed professional engineer (PE) and a certified secondary teacher (grades 6-12), both in Texas, as well as the owner of her own consulting firm, Schaefer Engineering. She obtained both her bachelor's and master's degrees in Mechanical Engineering (ME) from Texas A&M University (TAMU) and is currently pursuing a doctorate in ME at the University of Houston (UH). Her Ph.D. research interests are in STEM education, especially with underrepresented students of all ages, STEM mentors, and their motivations and/or persistence. The first part of her career was spent designing residential split system HVAC equipment and Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) units for Trane in Tyler, TX. Kristin has taught about design, engineering, and manufacturing to students of all ages in various places including to preschoolers via Schaefer Engineering’s STEM outreach, to senior mechanical engineering undergraduates at TAMU, to eighth graders in KatyISD at Beckendorff Junior High, and to freshmen mixed major undergraduates at UH.
Kristin is also the mom of one smart teenage boy whose journey through learning differences and Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) has enabled her to connect with and support students with a broad spectrum of learning preferences.
Jorge Rosales
Dr. Jerrod A. Henderson http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-0501-5805 University of Houston [biography]

Dr. Jerrod A. Henderson (“Dr. J”) is an Assistant Professor in the William A. Brookshire Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in the Cullen College of Engineering at the University of Houston (UH).

He began his higher education pursuits at Morehouse College and North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University, where he earned degrees in both Chemistry and Chemical Engineering as a part of the Atlanta University Center’s Dual Degree in Engineering Program. While in college, he was a Ronald E. McNair Scholar, which afforded him the opportunity to intern at NASA Langley. He also earned distinction as a Phi Beta Kappa member and an American Chemical Society Scholar. Dr. Henderson completed his Ph.D. in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During his time as a graduate student, he was a NASA Harriet G. Jenkins Graduate Fellow.

Dr. Henderson has dedicated his career to increasing the number of students who are on pathways to pursue STEM careers. He believes that exposing students to STEM early will have a lasting impact on their lives and academic pursuits. He is the co-founder of the St. Elmo Brady STEM Academy (SEBA). SEBA is an educational intervention aimed at exposing underrepresented fourth and fifth-grade students and their families to hands-on STEM experiences.
Henderson's research interests are in engineering identity development among Black men and engineering student success. He was most recently recognized by INSIGHT Into Diversity Magazine as an Inspiring STEM Leader, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences (LAS) Outstanding Young Alumni Award, and Career Communications Group with a Black Engineer of the Year Award for college-level promotion of engineering education.

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