Differences in Males and Females in When and Why They Become Interested in Information Systems Majors

Determining when and why students become interested in careers in information systems is a critical step in filling the pipeline of majors to become information systems workers. Although students who have chosen a particular major may find it difficult to indicate or even understand all of the reasons for their choice, it is possible to tease out several criteria that seem to significantly affect such choices. For computing and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) majors in particular, a person’s comfort level with STEM coursework perhaps as early as in elementary school seems to play a role. Also, their perceptions of how intellectually stimulating STEM courses were for them throughout their school years seems to affect their choice of a major. This paper aims at distinguishing when and why such majors are chosen through a survey instrument geared toward STEM majors and separates the results by gender and major, identifying when and why each group selected the major they did. The potential value of this research is in determining where efforts could be more specifically focused to recruit into STEM majors.