Department of Mathematics Education, Akdeniz University, Antalya, Turkey.
Department of Educational Administration and Supervision, Akdeniz University, Antalya, Turkey.
PLoS One. 2023 Jul 18;18(7):e0287967. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0287967. eCollection 2023.
Despite the rapid increase in the number of scientists all over the world in recent years, very few scientists can achieve to be part of elite scientist's category. Although there are many studies focusing on elite scientists, these studies generally do not focus on their childhood and parental background. In this study, which attempts to fill this gap, we focus on the cultural and economic capital of the families of elite scientists in Turkey and their parental support in childhood to analyze the roles of these variables in their being elite scientists. First, we assess the impact of cultural capital (institutional, objectified, and embodied), economic capital, parental support, and perceived academic success in basic education on the probability of becoming an elite scientist. Second, we analyze the differences among elite scientists to shed light on the gender gap in academia. We collected the data from 1,966 scientists working at 87 universities in Turkey through an online survey. Some of our main findings are as follows: (a) cultural capital, parental support, and academic success in basic education all have a strong positive effect on becoming an elite scientist; (b) objectified cultural capital has the highest impact in that an increase in this capital increases the probability of becoming elite scientists by 19%; (c) economic capital has no significant effect on elite scientists. Elite scholars have certain common characteristics, but significantly they are different from their average peers in terms of cultural capital and parental support and (d) elite female scientists have higher of cultural capital, economic capital, parental support, and academic success than elite male scientists. This finding supports the existence of the academic inequality and suggests that female scientists need higher cultural capital, economic capital, parental support, and perceived academic success to become elite scientists than their male counterparts.
尽管近年来全球科学家的数量迅速增加，但很少有科学家能够成为精英科学家的一员。尽管有许多研究关注精英科学家，但这些研究通常不关注他们的童年和父母背景。在这项试图填补这一空白的研究中，我们关注土耳其精英科学家的家庭文化和经济资本以及他们在童年时期的父母支持，以分析这些变量在他们成为精英科学家中的作用。首先，我们评估文化资本（制度、客观和体现）、经济资本、父母支持和基础教育中感知到的学业成功对成为精英科学家的概率的影响。其次，我们分析精英科学家之间的差异，以揭示学术界的性别差距。我们通过在线调查从土耳其 87 所大学的 1966 名科学家那里收集了数据。我们的一些主要发现如下：（a）文化资本、父母支持和基础教育中的学业成功对成为精英科学家都有很强的积极影响；（b）客观文化资本的影响最大，这种资本的增加使成为精英科学家的概率增加 19%；（c）经济资本对精英科学家没有显著影响。精英学者具有某些共同特征，但在文化资本和父母支持方面与普通同龄人明显不同；（d）精英女科学家的文化资本、经济资本、父母支持和学业成功都高于精英男科学家。这一发现支持学术不平等的存在，并表明女性科学家需要更高的文化资本、经济资本、父母支持和感知到的学业成功才能成为精英科学家，这比男性同行需要更多。
