INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVE: Underrepresented minorities (URM) within urology remain significantly low compared to other medical fields. Investigation into differences between urology residency applications by racial and ethnic groups may illuminate sources of bias in the current recruitment and selection process that contribute to continued underrepresentation.METHODS: A total of 342 personal statements submitted to the University of North Carolina urology program in the 2016-17 cycle were evaluated with Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), a validated text analysis program. Independent sample T-tests and multivariate regression controlling for STEP1 score and gender were used to compare match rates, residency application variables and statement linguistic characteristics by reported race/ethnicity. RESULTS: Of evaluated applicants, 181 identified as White non-Hispanic, 86 as Asian and 75 as an URM. When evaluating application differences by race/ethnicity, Asian and URM applicants had more research projects compared to White applicants (11.7 and 12.9 vs. 8.8, p[0.01). STEP 1 scores for URMs were slightly lower when compared to White applicants (244.6 vs. 238.5, p[0.01). When evaluating personal statement linguistics, all applicants wrote with the same degree of analytical thinking. Asian applicants wrote with decreased authenticity (p[0.03) and emotional tone (p[0.04) while URM applicants wrote with increased clout (p[0.04). Asian applicants used longer words and more formal sentence structure. Applicants also differed in their use of pronouns: Asian applicants used 'we/us/our' more often (p<0.01), URM applicants used 'you' significantly more often (p[0.02) and White applicants used 'I' more often (p[0.01). There was no significant difference in personal statement characteristics between matched and unmatched applicants.CONCLUSIONS: Improving diversity in the workforce requires awareness of biases that may exist in the application process. In urology applications, subtle differences in word usage and writing style exist by racial/ethnic groups, which could influence perceptions of applicants, matching, and downstream training interactions. Appreciating these differences may help residency programs recruit and support trainees from diverse backgrounds.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.