Participant Acceptability of the STEM-Focused ANGELS Pilot for Adolescent Females From Racial/Ethnic Minority Groups

ANGELS (Agriculture & Nutrition for Girls while Encouraging Leadership & STEM Enrichment) is a program for female adolescents from communities of color aiming to increase interest in STEM-education and careers with experiential agricultural and nutrition activities. To test the acceptability of the ANGELS pilot program. Program staff implemented ANGELS as a quasi-experimental, treatment-only pilot over 6 weeks in summer 2023 on a university campus in Southeast, Tennessee. Each week of the full-day programming had a different STEM-related theme (eg, agriculture, nutrition, leadership). All participants were 6-8th grade female adolescents from communities of color. Acceptability measures included weekly participant process evaluations (11-items) that explored opportunities for programmatic improvement and participant satisfaction and engagement; pre/post program evaluations (38-items) that explored interest in STEM content and careers; and post-intervention ripple effect mapping focus groups to explore participant perceptions of the impact of the ANGELS Program on themselves, their families, and their communities. Descriptive statistics were calculated for process evaluations and paired samples t tests examined differences in pre/post program evaluations. An inductive analytical framework was applied to qualitative evaluation data and code frequencies were calculated to inform direct content analysis. Most participants were retained throughout the pilot (n=15/16). Participants reported a mean score of 3.4/5 (±0.62) on the 8-item engagement scale (α=0.66). Although not significant, data from pre/post-intervention showed increases in “interest in math content” (3.89±1.46 vs. 4.09±1.36, respectively) on 7-point Likert-type scale; “perceptions of being in an environment supportive of science careers” (3.16±0.52 vs. 3.25±0.50, respectively) on a 5-point Likert scale; and “intent to pursue STEM-related education” (3.15±0.33 vs. 3.23±0.35, respectively) on a 5-point Likert scale. Participants perceived that learning about nutrition and food security were the most important takeaways. Participants indicated acceptability of ANGELS pilot; however, larger scale studies are needed to measure program effectiveness. Exploring the ANGELS program model as an avenue to address lack of nutrition practitioners from racial/ethnic minority groups is warranted. NIFA