Developing Non-Cognitive Assessment for Selecting and Developing STEM Graduate Students

Which non-cognitive competencies correlate with retention beyond year three and to completion?

The NRT-IGE has developed a quantitative assessment of non-cognitive competencies that can be added to the grad school application. We have developed the basic structure, developed measurement scales, conducted exploratory factor analyses and addressed issues of face validity; through broad-based testing, and it is now being tested through the IGEN Bridge Program.

The NCA is a 35-item questionnaire that assesses constructs that the natural sciences community [1] reported to be necessary for research success: self-management (e.g., Optimism, Trustworthiness, Achievement Orientation, Initiative, Conscientiousness, and Adaptability) and self-awareness (e.g., Accurate Self-Assessment), along with professionalism and grit. The generality of these constructs means they are likely to be useful to all disciplines.

We are using dimension reduction (EFA) to eliminate items to tie items to latent variables and then will perform a confirmatory factor analysis to confirm those variables into sub-constructs that correspond to factors that were deemed important in our initial exploration and creation of the tool.

Data will continue to be collected from new sources, and longitudinal data will be collected over the remainder of the project once the final version of the assessment is deployed.

The NCA may provides a tool for graduate admissions use in determining the non-cognitive factors that support success, based upon numerous studies in many different industries, and applies these factors within the context of graduate studies. The assessment is a non-biased assessment that is not impacted by culture, gender or race.

Admission and retention

Joann Farrell Quinn, Morsani College of Medicine

Casey Miller, Rochester Institute of Technology