Effects of a Women's Mentoring Workshop on Career Outcomes in Political Science, United States, 2018-2025 (ICPSR 39704)
Version Date: May 7, 2026 View help for published
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https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR39704.v2
Version V2 (see more versions)
Summary View help for Summary
Mentoring programs are assumed to benefit women's advancement in professional settings, including political science. However, causal evidence is scarce. The research team conducted a randomized evaluation of American Political Science Association's (APSA) flagship women's mentoring program for PhDs. The program consists of a workshop followed by periodic small group meetings. The research team randomized applicants to the program or a control group. The researchers administered surveys pretreatment, immediately after the workshop, and 2-7 years after, and collected CV and publications data at each wave. The program was positively rated by participants, and reported an increase in sense of belonging in the profession at year 2, but otherwise had null effects.
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This data collection may not be used for any purpose other than statistical reporting and analysis. Use of these data to learn the identity of any person or establishment is prohibited. To protect respondent privacy, the data files in this collection are restricted from general dissemination. To obtain these restricted files, researchers must agree to the terms and conditions of a Restricted Data Use Agreement.
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Study Purpose View help for Study Purpose
The purpose of this study was to provide causal evidence to determine whether mentoring programs benefit woman's advancement in professional settings.
Study Design View help for Study Design
The research team conducted a randomized evaluation of APSA's flagship women's mentoring program for PhDs. We recruited three cohorts to participate in a mentoring workshop in 2018, 2021, and 2023. The program consists of a workshop followed by periodic small group meetings. The research team randomized applicants to either complete the program or engage in a control group. Surveys were administered at several waves: pretreatment, immediately after the workshop, and 2-7 years later. The research team also collected CV and publications data at each wave.
Sample View help for Sample
There are approximately four thousand women who are members of the American Political Science Association.
For each workshop, the research team solicited applications from female scholars within five years of receiving their PhD who met certain eligibility requirements.
The researchers then manually constructed blocks of 2-4 eligible applicants using five variables that should predict career advancement: academic position, sub-field or research area, time since PhD, publication score, and departmental ranking.
The research team randomly assigned applicants from each block to participate in the workshop or to the control group. The treatment and control groups took the same post-treatment surveys.
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Universe View help for Universe
Women who are members of the American Political Science Association
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The attrition rate in the final 2025 survey was 4.7 percent.
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2026-02-12
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2026-05-07 The full product suite was created and data are now available in several formats (R, SPSS, SAS, Stata, TSV, TXT) with ICPSR codebooks.
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The weights for Datasets 1, 2, and 3 are WEIGHT_IPW and WEIGHT_MAR.
Dataset 4 has one weight, WEIGHT_IPW.
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