A Decade of Demographics in Computing Education Research: A Critical Review of Trends in Collection, Reporting, and Use

Computing education research (CER) has used demographic data to understand learners’ identities, backgrounds, and contexts for efforts such as culturally-responsive computing. Prior work indicates that failing to elucidate and critically engage with the implicit assumptions of a field can unintentionally reinforce power structures that further marginalize people from non-dominant groups. The goal of this paper is two-fold: to understand what populations CER researchers have studied, and to surface implicit assumptions about how researchers have collected, reported, and used demographic data on these populations. We conducted a content analysis of 510 peer-reviewed papers published in 12 CER venues from 2012 to 2021. We found that (1) 60% of papers studied older learners in formal contexts (i.e. post-secondary education); (2) 68% of papers left unclear how researchers collected demographic data; and (3) while 94% of papers were single-site studies, only 14% addressed the limitations of their contexts. We also identified hegemonic norms through ambiguous aggregate term usage (e.g. underrepresented, diverse) in 23% of papers, and through incomplete reporting of demographics (i.e. leaving out demographics for some participants in their sample) in 35% of papers. We discuss the implications of these findings for the CER field, raising considerations for CER researchers to keep in mind when collecting, reporting, and using demographic data.