Major Quantitative Findings

· Attitudes towards career interests were assessed via the Attitudes Towards Career Interests Scale (ATCIS), an 11-item, 5-point Likert-format scale. Further, attitudes towards STEM competencies were assessed via the Attitudes Towards Competencies Scale (ATCS), a 15-item, 5-point Likert-format scale.

· With regard to the ATCIS and the ATCS, 7 of the 8 score reliabilities were higher than the .70 cutpoint value for score reliability coefficients recommended by Nunnally and Bernstein (1994), and 6 out of the 8 score reliabilities were higher than the .80, with 2 score reliabilities being higher than .90. These score reliabilities justify use of these two instruments to assess student attitudes.

· The Esports students reported greater gains in both attitudes towards career interests and attitudes towards competencies than did their Non-Esports counterparts.
o Specifically, the Esports students reported a statistically non-significant gain in attitudes towards career interests of approximately one fourth of a standard deviation, and a very impressive statistically significant gain in attitudes towards competencies of approximately one-and-a-half standard deviations.

· For Day 1, 11 out of the 16 Day 1 activities yielded positive responses in favor of the Esports, with 5 activities yielding statistically significantly more positive attitudes in favor of the Esports students.

· For Day 2, 2 activities were yielded statistically significantly more positive attitudes in favor of the Esports students. Moreover, 20 out of 21 activities yielded positive responses in favor of the Esports students, indicating that the trend was statistically significant, with an extremely large effect size.

· For Day 3, 3 activities were yielded statistically significantly more positive attitudes in favor of the Esports students, Moreover, 20 out of the 22 activities yielded positive responses in favor of the Esports students, indicating that the trend was statistically significant, with an extremely large effect size.

· For Day 4, 3 activities were yielded statistically significantly more positive attitudes in favor of the Esports students. Moreover, 21 out of the 26 activities yielded positive responses in favor of the Esports students, indicating that the trend was statistically significant, with a large effect size.

· For Day 5, 3 activities yielded statistically significantly more positive attitudes in favor of the Esports students. Moreover, 21 out of the 24 activities yielded positive responses in favor of the Esports students, indicating that the trend was statistically significant, with a large effect size.

· The pre- and post-intervention comparisons of the 15 STEM competencies of Esports students as measured by the Attitudes Towards Competencies Scale revealed that six competencies yielded statistically significant gains in attitudes. Moreover, a total of 15 out of the 15 STEM competencies yielding increases in attitudes for the Esports students, indicating that the trend was statistically significant, with an maximal effect size.

· When asked on each day of Days 1 -5 to rank on a scale of 1-10 (i.e., 1 = low confidence, 10 = high confidence) their confidence in how they felt about their ability, with the exception of Day 3, the Esports students reported higher ratings than did the Non-Esports students. However, the differences pertaining to Day 2, Day 4, and Day 5 were not statistically significant. Only Day 1 yielded statistically significant differences in favor of the Esports students, with a large effect size associated with this difference.

Major Qualitative Findings

· Mentors are extremely important to the vibrancy of the program and offered participants needed help and support through each lesson.
· Instructors are crucial in developing lessons that speak to students needs and in helping them develop the dispositions around STEM careers.

Major Mixed Methods Findings

· Participants in both the treatment and control showed gains in difference in attitudes between pre and post-test of the STEM competencies in some indicators and less gains in attitudes in indicators of other competencies. In examining the observational videos and doing behavioral observation analysis, it appears that participants exhibit STEM competencies behaviors even if their attitude shift was minimal. Therefore, we believe that STEM competency behaviors were developed with participants regardless of attitude shift in the indicators we observed.

VII. Conclusion and Suggestions for Future Research and Monitoring and Evaluation Processes

      As can be seen from the summary of findings, our evaluation of this project has provided compelling quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods evidence that this project has great potential for increasing knowledge, skills, and dispositions related to STEM competencies and STEM career interest with marginalized youth. It is our strong recommendation that this project be scaled up to a regional and/or a national level.

     Our suggestions for future research include scaling up the camp to take place across the entire region in multiple locations, like developing a franchise of the Digital Warrior brand that was promoted in this project. We also believe attempts to bring in more female participation at the camper level would help with gender parity; therefore, we recommend that the team develop a comprehensive plan for increasing participation of females. The level of female mentors at the camp was phenomenal, so it would be beneficial to increase participation of female.

     Additionally, we recommend that each camp have built-in time for completing daily reflections (fidelity check instrument) at the end of the day prior to the lights out, but after all activities of the day have finished. Modeling and providing examples for how to fill out the fidelity check instrument will help gain more robust qualitative data. Furthermore, we suggest that the interview process for the campers take place after the camp has ended. This will allow campers to have the time to focus on the interview process and not be distracted by wanting to run back out to play games. Additionally, we also suggest standard training for the interview team so that they ask relevant probing questions that can yield more substantially rich qualitative data.