Did research programs protect science confidence in COVID?
Biomedical students in a funded undergraduate research program gained science self-efficacy from 2019 to 2020, unlike matched peers outside the program.
Source
The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Sense of Belonging and Science Outcomes among Biomedical Science Students: A Longitudinal Study
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cohort — CSUN undergraduates surveyed Spring 2019 vs pandemic follow-up; propensity-matched BUILD vs non-BUILD
- N
- N=133 · 22 BUILD and 111 non-BUILD in the matched sample
- Population
- Undergraduates at a large public university in Southern California
- Outcome
- Sense of belonging (or related psychosocial outcome) before vs during COVID-19
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Did research programs protect science confidence in COVID?
These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.
133 propensity-matched participants
Based on the PSM analysis, 133 participants produced similar propensity scores.
22 BUILD and 111 non-BUILD students
Of the 133 participants, 16% ( n = 22) were BUILD students, and 83% ( n = 111) were non-BUILD students.
What they did
At a large California public university, researchers followed biomedical majors with surveys in 2019 and 2020 spanning the onset of COVID-19. Using propensity-score matching, they compared 22 BUILD undergraduate research participants with 111 non-BUILD peers on science identity, science self-efficacy, academic self-concept, and sense of belonging.
What they found
Overall science outcomes shifted across years, with significant gains in science self-efficacy and academic self-concept but not science identity. BUILD students increased science self-efficacy while non-BUILD students did not show the same pattern. Belonging differences between BUILD and non-BUILD groups were not statistically significant.
The limits
What it doesn't show
Matching reduces but does not eliminate selection bias, and the BUILD cell is small. The study cannot prove that BUILD caused the self-efficacy gains or that results generalize beyond one campus and biomedical pathway.
Key terms
- Science self-efficacy
- Belief in one’s ability to succeed at science tasks and roles.
- Science identity
- The extent to which someone sees themselves as a science person.
- Sense of belonging
- Feeling accepted and valued within an academic or scientific community.
- BUILD
- An NIH-supported undergraduate research and training program aimed at broadening participation in biomedical science.
- Propensity-score matching
- A statistical approach that pairs participants with similar likelihoods of treatment to make groups more comparable.
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After matching, the analytic sample size was:
Common questions
What improved most clearly for BUILD students?
Science self-efficacy increased for BUILD students in a way that differed from non-BUILD peers.
Did belonging differ between BUILD and non-BUILD students?
Belonging scores were compared, but the difference was not statistically significant.
Did underrepresented status change the pattern?
Changes over time did not significantly interact with underrepresented racial/ethnic group status in this analysis.
Why does this matter for COVID-era teaching?
It suggests structured undergraduate research may help protect key motivational science outcomes when instruction shifts online.
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