Supporting the next generation into STEAM careers
As we saw in a recent Diversity in Tech report, when it comes to women and non-binary people in tech, science, and engineering, there is a lot to be done to address inequities that begin in the classroom and persist up to the boardroom. And as tech proves to be an essential part of the future of work, it’s vital to support the next generation to access these skills, networks, and career paths. One organisation tackling this issue head-on is Stemettes.
Stemettes is a social enterprise that supports girls, young women, and non-binary people into STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths) careers. Since being founded in 2013, they’ve reached over 60,000 young people. They do this through a variety of events that showcase diversity in those sectors, such as hackathons, panels, and trips for young people and schools. They also share lots of inspirational content through both online and more traditional media, and run intersectional cohort programmes that last up to a year. They gather information from their participants about whether the activities are having the desired effect of getting the next generation involved in STEAM.
What is Stemettes’ data challenge?
Because of the varied nature of the events they run (from short workshops, to day hackathons, to week-long programmes), Stemettes have a lot of disparate data in different places. As well as assessing if their programmes and events are working, they want help to standardise their data collected across a decade and compare outcomes across different programmes in the future. They can then explore how effective their interventions are longitudinally, using feedback from the young people they work with, with the end goal of ensuring that women and nonbinary can be proportionally represented in the STEAM field.
To help them do this, Stemettes partnered with DataKind UK and Bank of America for a DataDive project. They put together a team of volunteers to clean and prepare the data over a few weeks, leading up to a full DataDive weekend of analysis with a larger group of volunteers.
What did they find out?
Stemettes look for what they call ‘PANCK’ outcomes: Perception, Awareness, Network, Confidence and Knowledge about STEAM and STEM careers. The aim is that young people who join their activities show a self-rated improvement in one or more of these areas.
A hugely heartening result showed that thanks to Stemettes’ events, young people are improving in their Perception, Awareness, Network, Confidence and Knowledge of STEAM careers across the board in every programme. More in-depth analysis showed the effects of different programme lengths on these outcomes. Perhaps understandably, longer programmes showed higher improvement in awareness, confidence, and network scores for their participants. Stemettes can decide how they might change the focus of their activities to gain further improvements for their young people.
They also took a broader look at the demographics and groups that they were interacting with, including the OFSTED ratings of the schools that they have run programmes at, whether they were private or public, mixed or girls only, and even the proportion of students receiving free school meals. Proportionally, they found the schools they work with are representative of the UK as a whole, but there were areas they could improve their reach. If they gather more data in this area, they can get an excellent reflection about whether they primarily support more or less advantaged schools, and what to do about it.
Finally, Stemettes learned about the ‘user journeys’ of their programme participants, such as how likely people were to come to several events, and which events they were. They saw that panels and hackathons were the spaces that meant they reached the highest numbers of participants. In the long run, this will help them decide which events have the most, and desired, impact for their mission.
Weekend volunteer Alinna said “It is the most fun and impactful volunteer work I have done. Not only does it help the charity that we are working with, but also gave me the opportunity to work with very different datasets and challenges.”
What’s next?
Stemettes got to see a variety of new tools that they could use to improve their data collection, quality, and analysis. A member of the staff team has now started learning Python to improve their data science skills and ability to analyse their information. They also found out more about external resources they could use to inform their work, such as school-finding databases and other STEM support services.
They feel much more confident in understanding the data they have and are building out a long-term plan for a database and a ‘data and community’ team within their existing staff. They came away with the beginnings of a new data strategy and a plan to improve their data collection and storage, to allow for more and better accuracy of insights in future. This is alongside taking small immediate steps to improve the data they’re collecting, such as replacing free text with simpler multiple choice questions in their surveys; using an event platform that allows them to extract and analyse data more easily; and exploring a new database set up to capture it all in one place.
Stemettes’ CEO Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon loved the experience and said “The DataDive project was an amazing and enlightening experience for me. It has inspired me to evolve our data practice and begin an organisational restructure based on how we can better use data at Stemettes. The team was great, I had a really fun weekend.”
Volunteer Nick Jewell said that “Bringing data skills to social change is rewarding for everyone, and DataKind UK brings serious talent into the room for a high-energy, high-impact weekend of data diving!”
Thanks to Bank of America for their support of the project and to every one of their staff who joined us at the weekend, especially the Data Ambassador team of Rob, Maria, and Nidhi, and troubleshooter Nick.
And if you fancy joining us at a future DataDive weekend to flex your data skills for a great cause, sign up to our mailing list to hear about upcoming events.
