Hi everyone!
This week at the Applied Statistics Workshop we will be welcoming *Cassandra
Pattanayak*, Director of the Quantitative Analysis Institute and lecturer
at Wellesley College. She will be presenting work entitled *Effects of
Mentors and Advisors on Major Choice: A Naturally Re-Randomized Experiment
and a Subclassified Observational Study*. Please find the abstract below
and on the Applied Stats website here
<https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/applied.stats.workshop-gov3009>.
As usual, we will meet at noon in CGIS Knafel Room 354 and lunch will be
provided. See you all there!
-- Dana Higgins
*Title:* *Effects of Mentors and Advisors on Major Choice: A Naturally
Re-Randomized Experiment and a Subclassified Observational Study*
*Co-authored with Kelly Kung (Boston University)*
*Abstract:* We examine the effects of a peer mentor’s major and faculty
advisor’s department on a student’s choice of major at a liberal arts
women’s college. In particular, we study whether assignment to a peer
mentor or faculty advisor from STEM v. non-STEM fields during the first
year of college influences students’ choice to major in STEM v. non-STEM.
Our approach to the mentoring component illustrates a novel application of
rerandomization techniques to a natural experiment. The advising component
is an observational study designed for causal inference via
subclassification. Students’ STEM v. non-STEM choices did not appear to be
affected by the STEM status of first year peer mentors or faculty advisors
at this college.
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