Identifying the Prevalence of the Impostor Phenomenon Among Computer Science Students

Abstract

The Impostor Phenomenon (IP) is often discussed as a problem in the field of computer science, but there has yet to be an empirical study to establish its prevalence among CS students. One survey by the Blind app found that a high number of software engineers at some of the largest technology companies self-reported feelings of Impostor Syndrome; however, self-reporting of Impostor Syndrome is not the standard diagnostic for identifying whether an individual exhibits feelings of the Impostor Phenomenon. In this work, the established Clance IP Scale is used to identify the prevalence of IP among graduate and undergraduate computer science students at a large research-intensive North American institution. Among this population of over 200 students, 57% were found to exhibit frequent feelings of the Impostor Phenomenon with a larger fraction of women (71%) experiencing frequent feelings of the Imposter Phenomenon than men (52%). Additionally, IP was found to have greater prevalence among computer science students than among students of other populations from comparable studies. Due to the negative impacts associated with feelings of the Impostor Phenomenon, computer science education should work to improve student awareness and help student cope with these feelings. CCS CONCEPTS • Social and professional topics → Computing Education.

The Relationship Between Sense of Belonging and Student Outcomes in CS1 and Beyond

“…Although sense of belonging is distinct from self-efficacy [35], one can imagine how they might influence one another. Moreover, the persistence of a lack of sense of belonging with women may be connected to the recent finding of Rosenstein et al that showed women experience considerably higher rates of Imposter Phenomenon than men [25]. It could be difficult for a student to feel like they belong if they feel like an imposter.…”

Distribution of imposter syndrome among medical students of Bangladesh: a cross-sectional study

“…Considering the degree of accuracy, d = 0.05 and p as the approximate proportion of YIS (p = 0.47), taken from a related study conducted in Pakistan (Qureshi et al, 2017). So, the calculated sample size was 382; however, we targeted more subjects to be included than the required sample size.…”

“…Indeed, IS is becoming a growing public health issue both globally and regionally. For instance, the prevalence of IS among medical students has been found to be 30% in the US (Villwock et al, 2016), 45.7% in Malaysia (Ikbaal & Salim Musa, 2018, and 47% in Pakistan (Qureshi et al, 2017).…”

“…Several studies suggest that IS has a strong correlation with general psychological distress (Bravata et al, 2020;Sullivan & Ryba, 2020;Wang et al, 2019) and demographic and personal characteristics, including age (Bravata et al, 2020;Holliday et al, 2020;Sullivan & Ryba, 2020), gender (Gottlieb et al, 2020;Holliday et al, 2020;Rosenstein et al, 2020), and academic year (Gottlieb et al, 2020;Ikbaal & Salim Musa, 2018;Qureshi et al, 2017).…”

“…The evidence indicates that medical students experienced moderated-to-strong IS (Levant et al, 2020), which has psychological and academic consequences (Ikbaal & Salim Musa, 2018;Qureshi et al, 2017;Villwock et al, 2016). The move to the clinical phases of study can be particularly challenging and cause students to suffer from low confidence during this time (Burstein et al, 1980;Niemi & Vainiomäki, 2006).…”