Data and Code for: Diagnosing the Learning Environment in Introductory Economics: An Analysis of Relevance, Belonging, and Growth Mindsets

As part of our profession’s continuing efforts to understand and address the underrepresentation of women and minority students in undergraduate economics majors, this paper analyzes administrative and survey data to diagnose the learning environment in an introductory economics course. The first key contribution of our study is to document significantly lower survey measures of relevance, belonging, and growth mindsets (RBG) among women and URM students in introductory economics relative to non-URM men. Linking these measures to administrative data, we find that students with lower measures of RBG also tend to earn lower grades in the course and are less likely to declare economics as a major.We then provide evidence on the impact of a new, low-cost initiative that our department introduced to encourage persistence in economics among women and URM students.