Background: In higher education, efforts to broaden participation in computing are typically evaluated at a single institution, which limits our ability to isolate their impacts from those of other factors at the institution.

Purpose: Our goal is to identify potential drivers of more equitable patterns of CS participation in CS majors to guide departmental efforts to broaden participation in computing (BPC).

Methods: Using survey data from 60 CS departments, we create measures that relate to a department’s policies, BPC actions, tracking of student demographics, BPC values, and potential strains due to student capacity. Using linear regression, we analyze the extent to which these measures predict the percentage of CS Bachelor’s degree recipients from groups underrepresented in CS.

Findings: We find that CS departments that reported supporting (i) access to tutoring, (ii) K-12 outreach, and (iii) diversity initiatives tended to have a higher proportion of CS graduates who identify as women. The best predictor of Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous students’ representation among CS majors was their representation at the institution overall. Additionally, their representation tended to be higher when the department (i) allows students to transfer into a CS major, (ii) offers a CS course that is required for non-CS majors, and (iii) has not considered making courses or the major more competitive to reduce enrollment.

Implications: Our work offers suggestions of actions to take and avoid. Ultimately, additional multi-institutional research is needed to identify departmental actions that improve students’ experiences, learning, and graduation rates.