A Measure of Affect toward Key Elements of Engineering Professional Practice

Patrick, Anita D.; Choe, Nathan Hyungsok; Martins, Luis L.; Borrego, Maura; Kendall, Meagan R.; Seepersad, Carolyn Conner

doi:10.18260/1-2--27476

Cited by 16 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…As part of a larger project (Patrick et al 2017), we surveyed over 3000 undergraduate engineering students about their engineering attitudinal beliefs from the fall of 2016 to the spring of 2019. The online survey, which took approximately fifteen minutes to complete, was administered in class during the first 4 weeks of each semester.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…During its 3-year administration, the survey evolved through several iterations. In all, the instrument captured information about 25 unique factors, several of which are explored in our prior work (e.g., Patrick et al 2017). However, a core set of engineering attitudes were measured consistently at every time point, given their relationships to other academic and professional outcomes.…”

Section: Survey Instrumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Engineering students’ attitudinal beliefs by gender and student division: a methodological comparison of changes over time

2021

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Background Students’ attitudinal beliefs related to how they see themselves in STEM have been a focal point of recent research, given their well-documented links to retention and persistence. These beliefs are most often assessed cross-sectionally, and as such, we lack a thorough understanding of how they may fluctuate over time. Using matched survey responses from undergraduate engineering students (n = 278), we evaluate if, and to what extent, students’ engineering attitudinal beliefs (attainment value, utility value, self-efficacy, interest, and identity) change over a 1-year period. Further, we examine whether there are differences based on gender and student division, and then compare results between cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses to illustrate weaknesses in our current understanding of these constructs. Results Our study revealed inconsistencies between cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of the same dataset. Cross-sectional analyses indicated a significant difference by student division for engineering utility value and engineering interest, but no significant differences by gender for any variable. However, longitudinal analyses revealed statistically significant decreases in engineering utility value, engineering self-efficacy, and engineering interest for lower division students and significant decreases in engineering attainment value for upper division students over a one-year period. Further, longitudinal analyses revealed a gender gap in engineering self-efficacy for upper division students, where men reported higher means than women. Conclusions Our analyses make several contributions. First, we explore attitudinal differences by student division not previously documented. Second, by comparing across methodologies, we illustrate that different conclusions can be drawn from the same data. Since the literature around these variables is largely cross-sectional, our understanding of students’ engineering attitudes is limited. Our longitudinal analyses show variation in engineering attitudinal beliefs that are obscured when data is only examined cross-sectionally. These analyses revealed an overall downward trend within students for all beliefs that changed significantly—losses which may foreshadow attrition out of engineering. These findings provide an opportunity to introduce targeted interventions to build engineering utility value, engineering self-efficacy, and engineering interest for student groups whose means were lower than average.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Survey Instrumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Engineering students’ attitudinal beliefs by gender and student division: a methodological comparison of changes over time

2021

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“…Similarly, engineering graduate students indicated that communication skills competence is an important aspect for engineers (Choe & Borrego, ). Prior work has developed a scale to measure affect toward professional aspects of engineering identity among undergraduates (Patrick et al, ) and found that this professional scale explained an additional 18% of engineering identity over models considering only engineering performance/competence, interest and recognition (Choe et al, ). While interpersonal skills are only one aspect of professional skills, this prior result is compelling support for including interpersonal skills in a model of graduate engineering identity.…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Of these identities, disciplinary engineering identity has been studied most extensively among engineering students. Studies of undergraduate engineering identity have demonstrated relationships between engineering identity and retention in engineering (Patrick et al, ; Pierrakos, Beam, Constantz, Johri, & Anderson, ; Tendhar et al, ) and science and math identity and pursuit of an engineering major (Godwin, Potvin, Hazari, & Lock, ). Other studies are also beginning to link identity to persistence among engineering doctoral students (Miller et al, ).…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Master's and doctoral engineering students' interest in industry, academia, and government careers

Choe

Borrego

2020

J of Engineering Edu

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Background: Graduate education literature tends to focus on faculty careers with little attention to industry careers. However, more than one-third of U.S. engineering doctorates enter industry.Purpose: Our purpose is to understand engineering graduate students' interest in industry, academia, and government careers as it relates to their graduate engineering identities.Design/Method: A total of 249 engineering thesis master's and doctoral students completed a survey about their graduate engineering identities and career preferences. We created regression models to predict students' likelihood of pursuing careers in industry, academia, and government. Then, we used cluster analysis to understand the extent to which students are considering multiple options and used chi-squared and ANOVA tests to compare the clusters.Results: In the regression model predicting an academic career, research recognition and research performance/competence were positive predictors and engineering performance/competence was a negative predictor. Regression models of industry and government described less than 10% of the variance. Four clusters emerged, which collectively demonstrate that engineering graduate students are considering careers in multiple sectors. Students with internships during graduate study were more likely to pursue industry careers.Master's students were underrepresented in the cluster with highest likelihood of an academic career. International students were keeping more options open than some domestic students. There were also differences by engineering discipline. Conclusions: Engineering graduate students are considering multiple career sectors. Advisors and education researchers should focus not only on academic career preparation but also on industry and government career preparation, particularly on preparing for multiple options simultaneously. K E Y W O R D Scareer choice, master's students, PhD students, regression, survey

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“…We also borrowed items from several constructs to assess engineering graduate student identity including engineering components from undergraduate engineering identity instruments (Patrick et al, 2017;Prybutok et al, 2016 ) and research components from other graduate student instruments (Bieschke, Bishop, & Garcia, 1996). Because original items were not specifically developed for the target population, we interviewed several key informants to provide context on engineering graduate students' experiences as they related to their engineering and research identities.…”

Section: Survey Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%