Measuring academic mindset in economics courses

Understanding relevance, belonging, and growth mindset (RBG) has become a focal point in economics education for improving diversity. Previous literature suggests students from underrepresented groups have lower RBG (Bayer et al., 2020) and improving RBG leads to higher academic success (Broda et al., 2018). Before developing interventions to improve RBG and persistence in economics, it is important to understand which students are most at-risk of having low RBG. This paper proposes an aggregate measure of academic mindset including elements of RBG and investigates how students’ demographic characteristics predict their initial academic mindset when entering an economics course. This paper also investigates determinants of an economics-specific mindset index. The sample consists of 3212 students, 45 courses, 35 instructors, and 24 U.S. institutions and finds that students who identify as male tend to have higher academic mindset scores than those who do not identify as male, and this result seems driven by economics-specific attitudes. First generation college students (FGCS) also exhibit a lower initial academic mindset. The probability that non-male and FGCS students have a lower initial mindset is larger in introductory courses relative to upper-level courses. Future research should consider targeting these groups for interventions.