The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same: Gender Differences in Attitudes and Experiences Related to Computing Among Students in Computer Science and Applied Information Technology Programs

Previous research suggests that the current trend towards applied information technology (IT) programs can potentially expand the involvement of women in computing. This paper reports on a Web-based survey of female and male students in computer science and applied IT programs in five public U.S. universities, designed to determine if there were differences in their demographic characteristics, uses of and attitudes toward computers, and reasons for selecting an IT major. The findings reveal that while some differences exist between the computer science and applied IT students, especially in their demographics, more differences are due to gender than to major, and these tend to replicate earlier findings for computer science contexts alone. At the same time, women’s higher enrollments in the applied programs suggest that they see advantages to studying IT outside a traditional computer science environment, such as the possibility of applying computing knowledge to socially-meaningful work