RÉSUMÉ

Racial and ethnic minorities remain underrepresented in the biomedical research workforce. This pilot study used Social Cognitive Career Theory (Lent et al., 1994, 2000) to explore the influence of laboratory vs. nonlaboratory biomedical internship programs on minority students' self-efficacy and career intent. Both internship programs were designed to promote biomedical career choice. Pre/post surveys were administered to participants in both programs. Presurveys were completed by 231 students within one week of the start of an internship program. Of these, 117 students completed the postsurveys after completing their respective program. A gender effect was found for parental education level and participation in laboratory research internship programs. Women whose parents had college or graduate degrees were significantly more likely to participate in laboratory research internship programs. Students whose parents had no college education reported a higher pre-post change for interest in science than did students who had both parents with graduate degrees. Gender modulated correlation between birth in the United States and participation in laboratory research internship programs. Compared to foreign-born women, native-born women were more likely to participate in laboratory research internship programs. Gender moderated pre-post change in students' beliefs about their ability to understand scientific research in laboratory research internship programs. Women who participated in laboratory research internship programs had higher pre-post change in ability to understand scientific research than did women who participated in nonlaboratory research programs. Results suggested that parental education level is a predictor of student choice of internship programs. Our findings also suggest that laboratory research programs may provide greater benefit to minority native-born women students as reflected by higher scores on measures of science self-efficacy following their participation