Inequality of opportunity in selection procedures limits diversity in higher education: An intersectional study of Dutch selective higher education programs

Ethics and replicability. The research project was based on anonymized data from Statis- tics Netherlands and Studielink. Therefore, participant consent was not required. Statistics Netherlands microdata and Studielink data are non-public. The statistical results comply to all Statistics Netherlands privacy regulations and the Dutch law regarding use of their non-public microdata (Wet op het Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek, 2004). Selected data from Studielink of the applicant pool was anonymized by Statistics Netherlands. The researchers had no access to identifiable information. This study could be replicated if access to the datasets is gained. Our research protocol, including all procedures, sources of variables, and software syntax for statistical analysis, can be found in S2 File and on https://osf.io/rwhg3/? view_only = 7114b77c9f8b4062ab31f885ce331a65. Two government documents with data on HEIs and study programs were used to cross-check the accuracy of cluster sizes (number of institutions per cluster) in S1 Table. These can be found in the same database. Data of small groups. Statistics Netherlands regulations prescribe that descriptive statis- tics and analyses performed on groups smaller than 10 persons cannot be published in detail. As a consequence, we had to replace frequencies between 0–4 by ‘<5’ and frequencies between 5–9 by ‘<10’, to avoid traceability to an individual or small groups of individuals. If one Fig 1. Study size and exclusion criteria. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0292805.g001 PLOS ONE

Inequality of opportunity in Dutch selection procedures limits diversity in higher education PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0292805 October 13, 2023 7 / 24