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almost-mushroom t1_j1q7lax wrote

This data is not beautiful in this chart because it's hard to read.

Perhaps clustering the bubbles by rounding and make them the size of the cohort.

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TobyWasBestSpiderMan t1_j1qm45r wrote

Yes, either fit a regression to it or do like a KDE or something, it’s hard to tell what the distribution is because of the uneven sampling

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GeorgeDaGreat123 OP t1_j1r7yz1 wrote

Thank you for the comment, it slipped my mind while making this graph because I code these graphs manually and I forgot to implement that feature. I'll do that in the future.

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windowtothesoul t1_j1r66bv wrote

Or show the average for each, with error bars to emphasis that both are well within 1sd of the other.

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rabbiskittles t1_j1q94br wrote

I think these data would greatly benefit from some visualized summary statistics. Show me on the plot where the mean, median, and standard deviations are.

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roundhousemb t1_j1q4qy6 wrote

I feel like there's gotta be some bias in only sampling top performing students. If they were freshmen at your university maybe that's what was selected for it but it's odd to me that everyone's highschool average is in the 90s.

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OkPersonality6513 t1_j1q5bzp wrote

Yes and I would be very interested to see statistics for the lower grades too. Do people with lower grade have a self reported lower confidence or not would be a nice information.

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GeorgeDaGreat123 OP t1_j1qe86p wrote

Unfortunately (or fortunately), the mean. median. and mode of those who were admitted into my program was 97-98% because the program's so competitive.

That would be an interesting statistic to compare in another less competitive program where marks may be more varied though — like business or the sciences.

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Embarrassed-Loss-118 t1_j1rhnsx wrote

Usually best ones = men, and worst ones=men

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nocuzzlikeyea13 t1_j1rj5fv wrote

Why do you think that is?

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Alyxra t1_j1ryiqy wrote

Bell curve of IQ by gender, same reason vast majority of prisoners are male.

Men have both the highest IQ and the lowest IQ. Whereas women correlate more in the middle tier with less outliers on both ends.

In general.

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nocuzzlikeyea13 t1_j1sogyg wrote

I'm asking why you think that's the case? What's your theory as to why the data reflects that?

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throw_somewhere t1_j1tiy76 wrote

If you're curious about something, try looking it up, preferably on Google Scholar or some other more empirically robust place than Google.

Why ask a random Redditor what their theory is? They probably know just as little as you do. Laypeople really aren't knowledgeable enough to have plausible and well-informed theories outside their realm of expertise. Meanwhile there are scientists working on these problems for their entire lives, and their writings can be found relatively quickly.

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nocuzzlikeyea13 t1_j1xatxm wrote

I'm not actually a layperson, I have my own theory. I'm actually curious about what the consensus here is.

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Alyxra t1_j1uvxl5 wrote

I’m not sure.

If I had to guess I would say it’s probably due to evolutionary pressure from gender roles over thousands of years but that’s not backed up by any study.

I haven’t really researched this area much.

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Historical_Shop_3315 t1_j1trrko wrote

You could point to gender roles or biology. Men often try to make themselves exceptional in some way.

I cant find the source quickly but some reasearch found that men see about half the women they know as potential mates. This means women just need to be better than half to be considered by men. This isnt consciously done obviously but at some level most women are just tryig to be better than half.

Women only see 1-3 men as potential mates. Its a limited number independent of how many men they interact with. This means men need to excel or be exceptional in some way. If they arent then what is the point in trying.

In life this plays out as men reaching for extreems more often. And giving up if they wont be seen as exceptional.

If your not first, your last.

0

Embarrassed-Loss-118 t1_j2bfnfl wrote

Idk maybe as a society we tend to care more about women, so men are more likely to be homeless. But also men are more likely to sacrifice everything for an ideal, so it's more likely that most rich people are men.

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GeorgeDaGreat123 OP t1_j1qdtzd wrote

The fact that there were only students with high school averages in the 90s is because the software engineering program at my university is incredibly competitive.

At a 93% average, you have a 5% probability of admission.

The mean, median, and mode of all high school averages of those admiited into the program was between 97 and 98%. This statistic includes everyone as it was released by university admissions themself.

Since the surveyed mean above is also in the range of 97-98%, and 80% of people responded, I don't think that type of bias should be an issue.

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roundhousemb t1_j1qini1 wrote

I mean I don't think you can say that the bias isn't an issue if you want to make any kind of generalized conclusion off that data. It's representative of your program maybe (and maybe a few similarly competitive programs) but it's kinda a stretch to suggest it's representative of all who start software engineering degrees.

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GeorgeDaGreat123 OP t1_j1qivia wrote

Yes I agree, any generalization would require a multi-university survey

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phdoofus t1_j1qp55r wrote

>The fact that there were only
students with high school averages in the 90s is because the software
engineering program at my university is incredibly competitive.

Hello sampling bias

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hamburger5003 t1_j1r52x4 wrote

Yeah, also it’s grade averages and not a standardized test which may have an effect. Most schools tend to artificially bias female students’ grades higher, so doing it for a standardized test may give more accurate data.

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nocuzzlikeyea13 t1_j1rjawj wrote

Uhhhh source?

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hamburger5003 t1_j1rtem8 wrote

It’s a well documented phenomenon over the last few decades with a few possible explanations. It’s hard to search for general studies because most studies seem to be either super specific or more focused on the male/female differences in math and science/reading and writing performance. But here are the major ones I keep seeing cited.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/4120992 I believe the first to prove there is a general gender gap in received grades vs aptitude. Not in here but I believe other studies suggest this trend is present everywhere except Nordic countries.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01425692.2022.2122942 Major study recently to suggest that this gap is systemic.

From personal experience, I can’t give much to secondary school because it was all boys, and my tertiary is a very small male-dominated field, but I distinctly remember my primary school was very sexist against boys in a number of ways, and I would not be surprised if this were also in grades.

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Tasty-Tumbleweed-786 t1_j1u1sc0 wrote

Just a note that grades Vs tests is different from grades Vs aptitude - eg maybe girls don't test as well but are better at coursework/participating in classroom learning?

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hamburger5003 t1_j1unl42 wrote

Good point. It’s hard to differentiate these things. Aptitude is important to measure here because that is generally the goal when it comes to learning skills for careers or life, and they’ll try to measure these learned abilities with aptitude tests. Ie: you might have taken the ‘Scholastic Aptitude Test’ (SAT) in high school. One of the possible considered reasons for this discrepancy is just that males are better at taking tests and/or females are better at classwork, discussed in the first linked study.

From what I understand because I haven’t read more than the abstracts and intros is that the second study was supposed to have accounted for that idea and still found statistical bias.

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tryght t1_j1tpmy8 wrote

There was some sort of music or orchestra that decided to do blind listening tests for the judges to eliminate sexism.

There was a paper in 2000 that claimed that it increased female selection by 50%, but so far, only the opposite has been replicated and to my knowledge, no explanation to where they got their numbers was ever provided.

It turns out that when the judges knew that the women were women, they would rate them higher.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/blind-spots-in-the-blind-audition-study-11571599303

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kilawolf t1_j1rhow7 wrote

Is it? I feel like for many unis in my country now even 90 averages aren't enough for most engineering programs...and it's not even the good unis

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hedgehog090 t1_j1rkj5m wrote

What country are you from and what testing system do you use? Where I'm from a 96% average in grade 12 would likely put you at #1 in the country, and a 94% average would likely put you in the top 50 nationally. Honestly I prefer it that way, I can't imagine hundreds of people getting at or near 100 across all subjects, kinda defeats the purpose of figuring out who is at the top.

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DaBIGmeow888 t1_j1qedhx wrote

not statistically significantly different!!

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errdayimshuffln t1_j1pxqkz wrote

If I was the only guy in the class, I might feel like I don't belong and thus it makes sense that i would feel like an imposter.

In the large university I went to, the ratio of guys to girls was like 15 to 1.

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jrm19941994 t1_j1qh9xf wrote

Cool chart, garbage headline:

"Women face greater Imposter Syndrome than Men, when starting Software Engineering Degrees, despite having similar high school averages"

they face imposter syndrome? Like this plague that comes down from the sky and befalls them?

They FEEL imposter syndrome.

Knowing that the school system is somewhat biased in favor of female students (higher avg GPAs with lower avg SAT scores), this chart looks spot on to me.

I bet if you replaced GPA with SAT score percentile you would see much less disparity between sexes, though you would still see a disparity, as women on average are higher in sensitivity to negative emotion (Neuroticism per Big 5 personality inventory), which is of course highly correlated with feeling self-conscious, imposter syndrome being a sub-type of feeling self-conscious.

Just as an aside, when I was in my doctoral program we presentations and round tables about imposter syndrome, I was like "lol what are you talking about, you know XYZ how are you not competent?" Well, turns out I am like <5th percentile in neuroticism.

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hamburger5003 t1_j1r5ecb wrote

Most stuff I agree with, but I think imposter syndrome may also be heavily attributed to being in a heavy male dominated field.

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jrm19941994 t1_j1r63el wrote

I am in a majority female field and the females still tend to have imposter syndrome more frequently.

Not saying its no factor but I think the core difference is temperamental.

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tryght t1_j1tq07h wrote

It makes sense to me, on average women are more sensitive to negative emotion (higher neuroticism) and are more sensitive to issues with coworkers when trying to fit into their role (higher agreeableness): meaning they’re more susceptible to imposter syndrome.

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nocuzzlikeyea13 t1_j1rjojr wrote

Not discrimination?

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jrm19941994 t1_j1ruzth wrote

Not sure i understand your question, gonna need more context.

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nocuzzlikeyea13 t1_j1x9g1t wrote

You say the core difference is temperment, as opposed to discrimination. It's very difficult to study temperment and isolate it from discrimination, whereas the opposite is easy and well-studied (think studies that present the same CVs with different names). So concluding that differences in gender temperment lead to higher rates of imposter syndrome is a radical conclusion, while concluding that these differences stem from lifelong discrimination is less radical (at least in the academic community, maybe not so much on this sub).

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jrm19941994 t1_j1yv5lk wrote

I fail to see how the hypothesis that feeling self-conscious is positively associated with trait neuroticism is at all radical, in fact its about as self-evident as the hypothesis that people high in trait extraversion will have on average more social interactions in a given week.

I am unaware of the studies that use male vs female resumes specifically but would be interested to read them. I have seen where the used white vs African American vs African names, which was incredibly interesting as IIRC the resumes with "white" and "African" names did equally well, but the resumes with "African American" names did poorly, leading me to think the raters were using cultural vs racial cues to discriminate.

With regard to male vs female resumes, I am confident female would get an advantage applying to certain fields (for example childcare) while men would have an advantage in other fields (construction).

We must remember that those making hiring decisions are rationale actors who are trying to make the best decisions for their firm.

Speaking of the academic community, this seems to be an area where we see discrimination against males, as I have seen good data showing female academics on average only need to publish a fraction of the research their male colleagues do to get tenure.

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nocuzzlikeyea13 t1_j20dtiq wrote

https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2012/issue131a/

Your last paragraph is just untrue, sounds like you're basing it on the nonsense Strumia study that was never accepted into a journal. You also oversimplify: citation data and publication metrics are not fully objective, but bias informs them as well.

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jrm19941994 t1_j214vtx wrote

Fair enough, thank you for supplying me with some new info.

Care to address my first paragraph?

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nocuzzlikeyea13 t1_j21kz4l wrote

Ehh idk how to address it because it's so subjective. You say it's obvious, I say more data is required. I'm personally pretty conservative/cautious when it comes to making links to predictive behavior from our cultural understanding of gender. I think it's easy to jump to conclusions based on broad stereotypes that don't hold up to scrutiny, but I don't know that I can really prove you're doing that.

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jrm19941994 t1_j21mghl wrote

I am not using stereotypes at all.

All the Big 5 literature indicates women are higher in both neuroticism and agreeable than men, on average, across cultures, with more significant gender differences noted in more egalitarian countries such as the Scandinavian nations.

Now if we did a study where we looked at SAT scores, GPA, imposter syndrome incidence, and Big 5 aspect scale, then maybe we could learn something about gender differences in imposter syndrome specifically.

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GeorgeDaGreat123 OP t1_j1r8sys wrote

Thanks for the comment. Sorry about that, little mistake on the face vs feel in the title there.

What you said would be really nice to measure. Unfortunately (or fortunately but let's not get into that debate), we don't have widespread use of standardized tests in Canada which makes these comparisons more difficult. I took a psychology course last year, and I'm nowhere near competent in that field but it's interesting to hear about your point of view regarding the potential correlation with the Big 5.

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jrm19941994 t1_j1rco34 wrote

You are welcome!

For your specific research questions you could just use a GRE math section as a proxy for IQ (should be decent in the context of software engineering students).

With respect to the Big 5, its fascinating when you dig into it and particularly look at the sub-aspects (ie conscientious breaks down into industriousness and orderliness)

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throw_somewhere t1_j1tju9v wrote

Ironically enough, I'm neurotic as fuck but don't feel Imposter Syndrome. I have very average abilities and I don't pretend I'm any more skilled than that. Anyone that hires me is agreeing to take on a self-proclaimed mediocre worker, that's their fault!

Tbh I figure that a pre-requisite to Imposter Syndrome is some form of dishonesty, usually social posturing I'd guess. How else are people being fooled if you are not the one fooling them? It doesn't work if you say "Oh, no, it's just that they're wrong about me, making undue assumptions about my abilities etc." So, they're hedging their bets on you performing well, completely unfounded and detached from reality and any observable behaviors? Looks like we're all idiots, then, and you are no outlier.

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nocuzzlikeyea13 t1_j1xa0wk wrote

I think this is a pretty poor understanding of imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is the belief that your achievements were lucky, like "I scored an 800 on my SAT by random chance/because I'm a good test taker/etc, but this says nothing about my ability to do well in college." So then they believe they by luck got placed in the wrong class and don't deserve to be there. This is exacerbated by people treating them inconsistently, sometimes from direct discrimination, other times from unconscious bias. They feel a kind of survivor's guilt, that breeds shame, that breeds imposter syndrome.

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George297 t1_j1qqmz7 wrote

You need a hypothesis test to back up that claim based on this data. Those two groups for imposter syndrome look pretty similar given the SDs.

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nocuzzlikeyea13 t1_j1rjhiy wrote

This is a pretty well-studied phenomenon though, so it's not like we have flat priors or smth.

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George297 t1_j1rr64i wrote

Fair enough, but there still is no evidence from this dataset that the two groups are significantly different. More information is needed to draw the conclusion given in the post title.

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ashtobro t1_j1qx36s wrote

This data isn't very beautiful, both in style and substance. What's being surveyed doesn't even make sense in the context of your "findings," why and how can you measure levels of imposter syndrome in people *that haven't even gotten their degree yet?! Like why not survey post-grads??? Also the way the data was laid out is an assault on the eyes and mind. Not to mention you mixed and match sex and gender on a whim, even in a cisnormative world it's not very scientific to conflate categorically different groups like that.

I know this kinda shit is run of the mill for this sub, but that's kinda the problem. Reddit "scientists" survey or compare absolutely ridiculous things to come up with even more ridiculous conclusions, and many of them try graphs and crap to pass it off in subs like these. Many bootleg Reddit scientists are also bootleg graph designers; cuz it wouldn't be enough to just be a blight on academia, they just gotta ensure they suck with computers and or physically drawing the art too.

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Swordofdavid t1_j1r74oe wrote

How did you measured the levels of imposter syndrome?

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magneticanisotropy t1_j1qnxuk wrote

This doesn't look like there's enough of a difference to draw the conclusion you gave given the data... its probably true based on my priors, but it isn't shown here...

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SolWizard t1_j1qhst9 wrote

This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Who gets imposter syndrome from taking undergrad courses? Imposter syndrome comes from starting your first job and finding out how much you still don't know, or feeling like you'll never be able to contribute.

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roundhousemb t1_j1qlzj8 wrote

I mean one can feel imposter syndrome in a wide range of situations. Don't get me wrong I'm kinda dubious of any conclusions being drawn from this data, but I think it is common (or at the very least possible) for a student who is used to being near the top of their class and is suddenly middle of the pack because of the competitive admissions process to feel imposter syndrome. They feel they aren't actually succeeding unless they're "winning", which obviously isn't actually how school works.

That said, because this is a survey before they have actually attended any amount of university, they don't have any actual context for what university is like and I get the feeling it's more based on their perception of the school and where it was in their list. Was it a safety school? Was it their top choice?

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ashtobro t1_j1qyxj4 wrote

I mean I know higher education is a bit different than regular/high school, but unless it's the best uni in the country or the world, I can't imagine imposter syndrome manifesting that way. I'd speculate that any discrepancies were a result of the ratio of men to women anyways, and/or the ensuing culture from the slightly men-centric survey pool.

For all I know they just felt a bit less welcome but OP was only checking for imposter syndrome, there's honestly so many questions and unknown variables that this data seems like utter gibberish to the scientific method. Also why even interview students? Why not post grads that either have or are struggling to find a career?

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GeorgeDaGreat123 OP t1_j1r71lf wrote

"Imposter syndrome" or more accurately "confidence in ability" is a very big problem at my university since the software engineering and computer science programs are so competitive. It's the 1st or 2nd most competitive program in all of Canada.

For last year's graduating software engineering class:

The median salary was 120k USD plus 23k USD in stock/options and 29k USD signing bonus.

The average salary was 155k USD plus 70k USD in stock/options and 46k USD signing bonus.

No student graduated without a job, with only 6% earning less than 80k USD (75th percentile of individual income in the USA), and nearly half in the 90th percentile.

That said, it would be interesting to see how confidence in ability changed over the years from freshman to graduating classes.

−1

nocuzzlikeyea13 t1_j1rjvkd wrote

Incorrect, it's been demonstrated at the undergraduate level. The thought process is very similar: "i didn't deserve to get into this program, i don't belong in this class, i can't participate or learn because I don't belong."

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xBris18 t1_j1r572z wrote

p=1 or what? I don't get how you came to that conclusion...

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GeorgeDaGreat123 OP t1_j1psdqj wrote

Data Source: A 50 question survey that my team and I conducted at my university. Around 80% of those surveyed responded. The male:female ratio of those surveyed was 3:2, which was roughly equal to the gender ratio of respondents (also 3:2).

Survey Methodology: For this particular question, survey participants were asked to provide their high school average to 1 decimal place and rate their imposter syndrome on a scale of 0 to 10 (0 being nonexistent or extremely low, 10 being extremely high).

Tools Used: Google Forms for data collection, Node.js for data cleaning/formatting/analysis, React.js for data visualization. Added additional labels and statistics using Affinity Designer. Took about 300 lines of JavaScript code in total.

Based on the graph, it seems that women face far greater imposter syndrome than men, when starting a Software Engineering degree, despite having similar high school averages.

Questions and criticisms welcome.

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CrushgrooveSC t1_j1pzsfj wrote

Your source methodology doesn’t share how you defined imposter syndrome to the subjective self-diagnosing survey group. Imposter syndrome by definition isn’t really something that you experience if you’re aware that you’re experiencing it.

They are first year college students. One isn’t expected to know anything.

In this circumstance; Identifying that they are extremely weak and need to study a ton and feel ignorant of CS and Programming is not imposter syndrome, it’s just accurate awareness of their current progress.

Your methodology also does not show the subjective, self identifying imposter’s performance against any kind of control group. If, for example, the surveyed persons performed highly relative to people who did NOT self-diagnose with the condition based on whatever your prompt was, then you may have a point. But if, however, they were poorly performing, then they didn’t have imposter syndrome… they are rightly worried and aware of their poor performance.

My criticism would be that this data, as presented, does not tell me anything about imposter syndrome, but rather only the confidence level of some surveyed people in their own performance/aptitude. This by itself is not enough data to assess imposter syndrome.

Their high school GPA feels like an extremely low corollary data point.

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GeorgeDaGreat123 OP t1_j1qbjpw wrote

Thank you for the comment. I agree "confidence level" would have been a better way of wording it than "imposter syndrome".

The reason I used that word is just because it's the word our university faculty and professors chose to use to describe "confidence level".

Our admissions into our university faculty is extremely competitive in Canada, even surpassing a few American schools, and they see a wave of incoming freshman slowly lose their hope and confidence in themself, so professors often give speeches about "imposter syndrome".

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CrushgrooveSC t1_j1qcdlu wrote

Thanks for the reply, and for responding so considerately to criticism! I think it’s a worthwhile data gathering activity, and personally would be very interested in more detailed, scientific, controlled and correlated data in this area, and I think there is LOTS of room in the domain for real research if you were thinking of doing it more.

Unfortunately, almost all data I’ve seen on this domain has very similar oversight or gaps and it makes it difficult to create actionable policy or even opinions without further research.

I wish you and your university well!

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turgy22 t1_j1pwjte wrote

I'd be curious to see how the survey questions were worded. It could be possible the female participants were more likely to admit to having imposter syndrome, even though a similar number of males have the same confidence issues.

Also, high school curriculum may be a big factor that isn't addressed. Getting higher grades in irrelevant subjects would be less valuable than average grades in courses that provide an introduction to software development.

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GeorgeDaGreat123 OP t1_j1qa6k2 wrote

The 2 questions were worded similar to my comment above:

Please provide your high school average (to 1 decimal place)

Rate your imposter syndrome! 0 = I was bred for this program 10 = I think the admissions committee got my application mixed up with someone else's

You make a fair point in the last bit. This survey was sent out at the very beginning of the term, before any university curriculum was taught, so the conclusion still holds — but the reason for that could be that women in software engineering generally enter university with less coding experience than men in thr same situation. Anyways, sounds interesting, I might dig through the data and make another graph later.

0

MindStalker t1_j1qjz61 wrote

Would be interesting to later compare to university grades. I wouldn't be surprised if the men who were less different score better while women who are more confident score better. I could be totally wrong though.

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throw_somewhere t1_j1tl051 wrote

Respectfully, what on earth is going on with the wording for those questions? Why would the first question be a polite request (question with "please") while the second is a startling command (demand with exclamation mark)? In what world is "Rate your [sensitive confession]!" an appropriate way, verbally, to elicit that data?

You took your one psych class which is more than enough to know that those things matter. If this were any sort of formal research project all your data would be tossed in the garbage, do not pass go do not collect $200, because you don't pass even the second most basic level of smell test (the first being that you didn't dox them, their entire families, and their dog).

Please do some reading on how to conduct surveys before doing any more.

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GeorgeDaGreat123 OP t1_j1urwjv wrote

My team and I gathered data for this 50 question survey before I took that psych class. However, point taken. Thanks

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xavia91 t1_j1ptr46 wrote

Why did you focus on highschool grades? They represent nothing of value for how good someone can do as software engineer.

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Altofaltception t1_j1ptvqw wrote

They are first year students.

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xavia91 t1_j1pulqe wrote

Okay then I have to ask, how can someone who is an absolute noob in their field of study have imposter syndrome?

Knowing next to nothing is basically the definition of what is expected of you.

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GeorgeDaGreat123 OP t1_j1qcc4k wrote

Yes, thank you for the comment. I agree confidence level would have been a better word choice.

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ezriah33 t1_j1qcofx wrote

I would actually not use the term confidence level in the chart since that has a statistical meaning and could be confusing. Maybe confidence in ability or something more descriptive

2

Pac_Eddy t1_j1pv8z9 wrote

It's a measure of their confidence, not necessarily what they know.

−4

xavia91 t1_j1pvgwv wrote

Then it should be called that, because not being confident and imposter syndrome are two different things.

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Pac_Eddy t1_j1pvxej wrote

They're very similar things.

−10

WoWMHC t1_j1pwr03 wrote

Not really… coming from someone who has experienced imposter syndrome.

“Confidence is about what we can and can't do. Imposter Syndrome is about who we think we are.”

Imposter syndrome makes you feel like a fraud or you don’t belong. It has nothing to do with what you feel you can and can’t do.

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Altofaltception t1_j1qber3 wrote

>Imposter syndrome makes you feel like a fraud or you don’t belong.

A first year student can have those same feelings: "am I good enough to be at this school? I'm not as smart as all these other students."

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Pac_Eddy t1_j1pwws5 wrote

Nope.

Have a good day.

−10

WoWMHC t1_j1pxg6t wrote

Nice one. Enjoy that level of ignorance for the rest of your life. It’ll serve you well.

5

epic1107 t1_j1q07vl wrote

In this setting, imposter syndrome would focus around the students not believing they are smart enough, given the school environment. You are the one being ignorant.

−3

WoWMHC t1_j1q4d1v wrote

Then it’s not imposter syndrome, it’s a lack of confidence. Imposter syndrome is knowing you can do something but feeling like you don’t belong there.

0

epic1107 t1_j1q4jtz wrote

Impostor syndrome is the internal psychological experience of feeling like a phony in some area of your life, despite any success that you have achieved in that area

This is a graph showing people who believe they don't belong (feeling like a phony), despite the success they have achieved (high academic grades).

1

Thenerdy9 t1_j1pxcde wrote

Is Nm=Nw? I can't tell if you just have more men responders and that's why there is a cluster of men without any women on the chart.

otherwise, I don't know that I can visually see this in the data that is so obvious, I'd love to see some stats.

Looks like imposter syndrome is universally experienced by most, but there is one clear deviation with a cluster of blues that are low.... what do they share? Dod they grow up with more privalege? Have the been working for longer? Do they take advantage of more support services? Are they more extroverted?

Also, would be insightful to include nonbinary. If you're specifically looking at a social gender difference, I theorieze that nonbinary gendered people would feel less imposter syndrome. Though, also nonbinary is multifaceted, so if you had a big enough sample size you could investigate this more.

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GeorgeDaGreat123 OP t1_j1qbvls wrote

The ratio of men to women was roughly 3:2

I've provided the mean and the std deviation at the top of the chart for each number by gender, so you don't have to rely solely on the graph which as you mention may have a few flaws.

2

RelativeAssistant923 t1_j1q7i13 wrote

You provide a standard deviation, but not a p value or anything that reflects statistical significance.

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KeepTangoAndFoxtrot t1_j1pundo wrote

> Around 80% of those surveyed responded.

Holy cow that's an incredible response rate! Were responses incentivized in any way?

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3pbc t1_j1pv5me wrote

Sounds like an experiment that have freshmen as their subjects who are extremely encouraged to participate

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GeorgeDaGreat123 OP t1_j1qc75p wrote

No incentives, but we email this 50 question survey out to freshman at the beginning of the term. We also get our department leads and professors to send out an email to everyone.

2

arekniedowiarek t1_j1q40sc wrote

Did you have there an explanation of what an impostor syndrom is?

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GeorgeDaGreat123 OP t1_j1r7bjw wrote

It is supposedly rampant every year at our university, so faculty heads and professors often write emails or perform speeches about it, especially to freshman.

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rollie82 t1_j1q8hw3 wrote

This seems to suggest that the major itself is meaningful; I'd want to know how this compares to similar studies in other STEM and non-STEM fields. Basically looking at this I ask myself "do female students just profess less confidence than their male counterparts in general?"

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Sheamus_1852 t1_j1q7mhh wrote

Females in general have a high rate of perfectionism, it would stand to reason that they have a higher rate of imposter syndrome. I would assume those with imposter syndrome generally focus on what they missed/failed rather than what was right.

I’d also say this is a relatively skewed data set. Software engineering is a highly male dominated area of study (roughly 16% of software engineering degrees are earned by women). There is probably imposter tendencies from a point of gender bias or a need to prove gender strength. I’d be curious to see the difference if you surveyed a nursing program or early childhood education program. You could probably have a more even gender divide if you did a marketing program.

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Lycoris1313 t1_j1qb5cl wrote

I agree with there being a skew or bias based off the gender-split of the degree and the degree itself. Though I'd be curious to know when this poll was completed -- before freshman year started, 1 week in, 1 month in, etc.
When I was in undergrad, I was studying engineering where only 15% were women. Very quickly in my freshman year I realized that I was constantly put down and criticized by my male classmates for any little mistake or mishap - I had to report 4 men within my semester for sexual harassment and harassment in general. It was a huge blow to my self-confidence and certainly made me question my own abilities and suitability for the degree.
It would be interesting to see what the numbers would look like if this was polled during or before orientation week vs. 1/6/12 months vs. graduation week of senior year.

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GeorgeDaGreat123 OP t1_j1qfd4i wrote

Thank you for the comment.

This was completed within the first week (during orientation week) before any proper curriculum was taught. There were many speeches and emails about "imposter syndrome" from faculty heads and professors though, as it seems to be a significant problem at my university every year.

The male:female ratio here was 3:2 so I would assume it is probably less likely for harassment to happen.

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GeorgeDaGreat123 OP t1_j1qcv7j wrote

This survey had a male to female ratio of 3:2 (which is the same as the composition of the software engineering program at my university). Yes that last part sounds quite interesting.

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radioowl t1_j1qve7b wrote

It would be interesting to share this with your program coordinator to create support groups for women in the program to help build confidence while in school to help them with their career once they graduate. Confidence is a skill that needs to be practiced.

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werewaffl3s t1_j1qo6px wrote

It’s expected first year students know nothing about anything, so what qualifications do they feel they’re “faking”? You’re just experiencing real life for the first time and if you feel unqualified, it’s because most people are at that age.

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SndRC9 t1_j1r3gnk wrote

I'm sorry I thought this was a joke about Among Us

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Acrobatic-Bed-7382 t1_j1ra8qy wrote

Given our cultural leanings/assumptions, that just makes sense.

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notacanuckskibum t1_j1rb7ib wrote

We need a control group, maybe students in another discipline. We can't tell if this effect is specific to software engineer, or whether teenage boys are just more self confident in general.

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TitianPlatinum t1_j1rmima wrote

Could also be underreporting/overreporting

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siliconunit t1_j1qpcl8 wrote

Maybe there's another layer, ie that other paper about better looking students getting higher grades? In this case better looking == women, in a predominantly male env.

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ewoolly271 t1_j1r0n4e wrote

What were their math SAT scores?

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RaddyMaddy t1_j1r3cwz wrote

Imagine putting the 4 people from the 4 corners together in a team.

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CeruleanDragon1 t1_j1r4nwo wrote

So men suffer from imposter syndrome less than women, and higher scorers suffer less (proportionately).

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trollsmurf t1_j1sbkjo wrote

One factor should have been "do you write code as a hobby and have you built any complete solutions outside of school?" to see how it correlates.

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insufferablyaverage t1_j1terfz wrote

The guy who rated himself a 1 with a 91% average is a prime example of the dunning kruger effect

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Dawzy t1_j1tf8r6 wrote

As a side note, could it be that because there is such a push to get Women into STEM (which is a great thing), that perhaps they feel as though they don’t deserve it once they get the job?

They might be perfectly well credentialed and/or experienced but feel as though they’re not good enough because they might think they’ve been pushed through because they’re a women

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AlanWik t1_j1rjkso wrote

I am not able to interpret this graph :|

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nocuzzlikeyea13 t1_j1rk3ne wrote

Lol why is everyone so skeptical of this study when its findings are not at all radical or at odds with the literature? Much higher quality data reflects the same result. It seems ideological bias is at play here...

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throw_somewhere t1_j1tlb4y wrote

Poorly constructed datasets don't get a pass just because they have popular results. All data deserves to be scrutinized.

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nocuzzlikeyea13 t1_j1xamli wrote

Have you heard of something called a Bayesian Prior? Colloquially, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This isn't an extraordinary claim, if anything it's extremely mundane. The high level of scrutiny here isn't actually very justified at all.

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throw_somewhere t1_j1xfpjb wrote

Friend your first half is correct but is irrelevant to the back half. The scientific enterprise falls apart if we just hand-wave anything that agrees with us. For real dude, logically what's wrong with you.

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nocuzzlikeyea13 t1_j20efdl wrote

I'm not sure what you mean about handwaving everything that agrees with us? I'm not saying this data should be published, I'm just saying that it's surprising the level of pushback it's getting on a reddit sub, the pushback generally seeming to reject the results. The results are not surprising at all. I don't see the harm in someone taking some anecdotal data in their own class and sharing it here. I do see the harm in a lot of these comments basically saying, "but women don't really earn good grades, but this headline is so flawed, but but but" when the conclusions of this anecdotal story align with more robust data. It would be like if you say your friend died in a drunk driving accident, so drunk driving is bad, and everyone flooded you with, "but that's a sample size of 1!!!!!!" Like... Yea but also we know this is a real thing so chill.

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incraved t1_j1s3o41 wrote

Just wanted to say that having the same scores at highschool (or even higher) doesn't mean shit. Most software dev is learnt by practice not by doing well at exams.

However, I'd still imagine that girls on average would experience "not fitting in" more than boys even if they have the same abilities. This is for the obvious reason that 95% of tech is male.

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venny123 t1_j231efv wrote

As a male psych major I would say the reverse would apply, as I look around my classes 90% are female within my major. I can’t help but think maybe they are better than me with people? Maybe I play with ideas in my mind better? Our incentives may be different and I already feel an outcast. I see the female experience in STEM fields is similar…

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himmmmmmmmmmmmmm t1_j1qvzab wrote

Maybe the results would have been different if the population had to complete the survey using a command line interface instead of Google fucking Forms

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GeorgeDaGreat123 OP t1_j1rhahd wrote

What's wrong with Google Forms?

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himmmmmmmmmmmmmm t1_j1rzw9p wrote

Imagine a professional plumber using garden hose for your indoor plumbing

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GeorgeDaGreat123 OP t1_j1s0xaq wrote

It collects data and everyone knows how to use it. I don't see a problem since analysis is done elsewhere.

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DaStalkingBiscuit t1_j1rsrqh wrote

How was data collected? Were people asked to rate how much of an imposter they felt from 1 to 10? The y graph is pretty hard to interpret if we don't know the things people were asked, or how they were asked.

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badabababaim t1_j1s3029 wrote

This is not beautiful and a terrible sample, 1st year students doesn’t mean anything, and why only 90-100%, that is a small difference and depends on countless factors

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willingtony t1_j1r2932 wrote

Because women get way better grades, easily.

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Omega-Sector t1_j1qty3b wrote

No one cares about career women dude

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