Development and Testing of an Instrument to Understand Engineering Doctoral Students’ Identities and Motivations

Abstract

Heather entered the Applied Social and Community Psychology program in the fall of 2014, after completing her Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the University of Cincinnati. She has participated in various research projects examining the interaction between stereotypes and science interest and confidence, their influence upon womens' performance in school and the workplace, and their presence in the media and consequences for viewers. Her primary research interest is science identity, STEM education, and participation in online communities.

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

“…However, this analysis also demonstrates that the framework of research performance/competence, interest, and recognition holds for doctoral and thesis master's engineering students. This result is again similar to Perkins et al's () EFA of research‐related items only. The current study expands this finding through a combined EFA, which demonstrates that disciplinary engineering and research identity items are distinct, and it includes master's students.…”

“…The factor analysis presented here provides insight into how engineering identity frameworks developed for undergraduates translate to the graduate level. As we and others have previously found (Choe & Borrego, ; Perkins et al, ), we were able to adapt engineering disciplinary performance/competence, interest, and recognition scales to the graduate level. This result was expected since 90% of our sample and 84% of recent engineering PhDs hold bachelor's degrees in engineering.…”

“…According to our analysis of Survey of Earned Doctorates data, 84% of engineering PhD recipients from 2006 to 2017 hold bachelor's degrees in engineering (National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, n.d.). Two quantitative studies using independent samples of engineering graduate students at different U.S. institutions have confirmed that engineering performance/competence, interest, and recognition translate to the graduate level (Choe & Borrego, ; Perkins, Bahnson, Tsugawa‐Nieves, Miller, & Kirn, ). However, simply adapting these aspects of engineering identity from the undergraduate to graduate level is not inclusive of the many professional roles and associated identities of engineering graduate students, particularly as they consider careers in industry, academia and government.…”

“…Corte and Levine () argued that research identity is highly related to one's research interests. Indeed, two independent prior studies present evidence that performance/competence, interest, and recognition related to research are relevant factors in studying engineering graduate student identity (Choe, Borrego, Martins, Patrick, & Seepersad, ; Perkins et al, ). In one of these studies, Perkins et al's () separate exploratory factor analysis (EFA) on research‐related items only yields factors for performance/competence, interest and recognition.…”

“…Indeed, two independent prior studies present evidence that performance/competence, interest, and recognition related to research are relevant factors in studying engineering graduate student identity (Choe, Borrego, Martins, Patrick, & Seepersad, ; Perkins et al, ). In one of these studies, Perkins et al's () separate exploratory factor analysis (EFA) on research‐related items only yields factors for performance/competence, interest and recognition. In our own prior work, we ran a combined EFA of engineering disciplinary and research items, which yielded an additional factor that we named interpersonal skills competence as a part of professional skills competence (Choe et al, ).…”