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This NSF EIA Information Technology Work Force (ITWF) award to North Carolina State University will support the development and testing of a model of the factors associated with young women's decisions to persist in advanced mathematics and computer science courses so as to prepare themselves for, and decide to make Information Technology (IT), their career. IT careers are defined as those requiring an electrical engineering, computer science, or Computer engineering bachelor's degree. Success factors rather than failure factors will be examined in order to make a significant contribution to the research on gender and IT. The project's objectives are to: a) Identify school, social, and personal factors associated with young women's decisions to pursue undergraduate study in IT fields. b) Create and test a model using the above factors to predict young women's decisions to pursue (enroll into) IT undergraduate study. c) Disseminate the results of this study in professional publications, professional meetings, advisory board meetings, and in an electronic monograph to scholars, teachers, policy makers, parents, and young women. d) Propose appropriate interventions to increase young women's interest in IT careers based on this research model. To identify the factors, the investigators will implement the inquiry from a grounded theory perspective. Subjects will be young women, already identified as talented in mathematics in middle school, who participated in the NSF Gender Equity project, Girls on Track (GoT), beginning in the Summer of 1999.