Same structures, different settings: exploring computing capital and participation across cultural contexts

Abstract

The number of people choosing to study computing in higher education remains low. Previous research has developed a research instrument to identify factors underlying student participation grounded in Bourdieu’s sociocultural theory. This study replicates and extends the original study, which identified key social, cultural, and psychological factors linked to computing education participation in Sweden. Using the validated research instrument, we distributed a survey across 11 UK universities, gathering responses from 131 students. Through Confirmatory Factor Analysis, we assessed the robustness of the original study’s constructs — career interest, subject-specific interest, influence from family and friends, confidence, and sense of belonging — and their relationship to subject choice in computing. After model refinements, the replication confirmed and validated the factor structure, supporting the stability of these constructs and their relationship to computing subject choice across cultural contexts. In addition, the current study adds additional open-ended questions to the research instrument to help explain the quantitative results. A thematic analysis further explains the correlation between previous experience, social influence, confidence, and gender, and how that relates to participation in the field. By replicating and extending the original study’s methodology, this research evaluates the reliability and generalisability of its conclusions, contributing to the evidence base needed to design interventions that broaden participation in computing education.