Understanding engineering identity through structural equation modeling

Godwin, Allison; Potvin, Geoff; Hazari, Zahra; Lock, Robynne M.

doi:10.1109/fie.2013.6684787

Cited by 94 publications

(112 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…The 0.72% that remain engaged perhaps hold the key to understanding the mechanisms necessary to pursuing a satisfying and lengthy career in engineering. The identity framework has proven to be successful in understanding engagement throughout the engineering learning life cycle, K-16 and the workplace 22,23,7 ; however, it has been limited to race or gender or engineering. The recommendation is to push the boundaries further, to look at the complexities that exist at the intersection of race, gender, and engineering identities.…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Engineering Identity Implications on the Retention of Black Women in the Engineering Industry

Ross

Godwin

2016 ASEE Annual Conference &Amp; Exposition Proceedings

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Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Engineering Identity Implications on the Retention of Black Women in the Engineering Industry

Ross

Godwin

2016 ASEE Annual Conference &Amp; Exposition Proceedings

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“…This measure has been used to understand students' STEM career choices 16,17 . Additional work has been conducted to expand this original quantitative instrument to measure math and science identities [18][19][20] . The physics and math measures have been used in several large-scale, nationally representative studies to understand the impact of these identities on students' choice of a STEM major in college 18,19,[21][22][23] .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Development of a Measure of Engineering Identity

Godwin

2016 ASEE Annual Conference &Amp; Exposition Proceedings

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This research paper describes the recent development of items to measure post-secondary students' engineering identity. Engineering identity is a particular type of role identity that students author during their experiences in engineering, typically in college. This paper draws upon a subject-related role identity framework that focuses on students self-beliefs of their interest, performance/competence, and recognition within engineering. First, a pilot survey of 371 first-year engineering students was conducted at three institutions in the U.S. during the spring semester of 2015. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed to examine the underlying structure of the piloted questions about students' engineering identity. The developed items were used in a subsequent study deployed in the fall semester of 2015 that measured more than 2500 first-year engineering students' attitudes and beliefs at four institutions in the U.S. The data on engineering identity measures from this second survey were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The results indicated that the developed measures do extract a significant portion of the average variance in the latent constructs and the internal consistency of the measures (Cronbach's α) fell within the acceptable and better range. The development of these items provides new measures for engineering education researchers to more deeply explore the underlying self-beliefs in students' engineering identity formation.

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“…8 Interest describes how motivated a student is in the content and career they are pursuing, often encompassing the motives a student has for pursuing engineering. 7,9 The motivations a student has for pursuing engineering can include both personal and global agencies, or one's capacity to have an effect on one's own life or the lives of others, respectively. 5 Recognition can often be broken into two categories: recognition by self and recognition by others.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recognition by others describes how other students, professors, family, and friends see the student in the context of engineering, and how that message is transferred to the student often affects their selfrecognition. 9 These four factors (performance, competence, interest, and recognition) are measured using survey scales previously developed for math and physics, though performance and competence tend to load onto the same factor. 7 Although these studies have explored relationships between math/physics identity and pursuit of an engineering major, they have not attempted to measure engineering identity directly.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cross-sectional Survey Study of Undergraduate Engineering Identity

Prybutok

Patrick

Borrego

et al.

2016 ASEE Annual Conference &Amp; Exposition Proceedings

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Identity is an increasingly popular lens for studying recruitment and retention in engineering. Most of the research conducted on modeling student development of engineering identity and related contributing factors has examined high school students and college freshmen. However, many engineering students drop out in the first two years, as they continue to shape or abandon their engineering identities throughout the course of their college careers. This paper explores engineering identity differences between lower-and upper-division undergraduate engineering students in mechanical and architectural/civil engineering at a large public institution (n=563). In this preliminary analysis, student responses were classified based on the designation of the course in which the surveys were completed: lower-division courses typically include freshmen and sophomores early in their engineering curricula, while upper-division courses typically include juniors and seniors and require lower-division courses as pre-requisites. This designation is established by the institution to distinguish gateway courses from major sequence coursework, since students are admitted directly to their specific engineering majors as first-year students. The new survey instrument borrowed previously validated scales for physics, math, and science identity to measure engineering identity directly. This survey included scales to measure both math and physics identity, multi-item scales thought to construct engineering identity (including direct measures), and background demographic information on the participants. During analysis, t-tests were used to compare differences in survey responses between the upper-and lowerdivision students, as well as between the mechanical and architectural/civil engineering students. Exploratory factor analysis identified 22 factors. The t-tests suggest that upper-division students exhibited a higher physics recognition by others while lower-division students exhibited a higher math interest, and global agency related to caring about others. However, the upper-and lowerdivision students did not exhibit significantly different responses to the engineering identity questions. Future work should separate data by year to further differentiate identity as students progress in the major. As engineering undergraduate identity research continues, it will be important to understand how engineering identity develops over all four (or more) undergraduate years. Examining the factors that contribute to successful identity development can be used to increase engineering retention rates by developing solutions that provide freshmen and sophomores opportunities to identify themselves as engineers at an earlier stage.

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Understanding engineering identity through structural equation modeling

Cited by 94 publications

References 23 publications

Engineering Identity Implications on the Retention of Black Women in the Engineering Industry

Engineering Identity Implications on the Retention of Black Women in the Engineering Industry

The Development of a Measure of Engineering Identity

Cross-sectional Survey Study of Undergraduate Engineering Identity

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