Attracting women to computing : a framework for evaluating intervention programmes

The lack of women in the computing industry in Australia, and in many western countries, is a problem that has been recognised by academics, the industry and governments. Over the last 20 years there have been many attempts to redress this gender imbalance via intervention programs aimed at increasing female participation in computing education and ultimately the computing profession. However statistics show no improvement in the rate of participation of females in this industry and anecdotal evidence suggests that these intervention programmes have not been as successful or effective as was anticipated. Evaluation could determine the effectiveness of such programmes yet only limited evaluations appear in the literature about intervention programmes established to encourage females in computing. This thesis sought to investigate how these types of intervention programmes should be evaluated.

The research was divided into three phases. The first phase involved theory building through an extensive review of the literature related to intervention programmes for women and computing,and of the theory of evaluation. Based on the logic model for evaluation, an initial framework was developed that represents a theory of effective programme evaluation. […]