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CrushgrooveSC t1_j1pzsfj wrote

Reply to comment by GeorgeDaGreat123 in [OC] Women face greater Imposter Syndrome than Men, when starting Software Engineering Degrees, despite having similar high school averages by GeorgeDaGreat123

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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