2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Work in Progress: Proposing Items for an Engineering Undergraduate Subjective Wellbeing Questionnaire (EUSWQ)

Presented at Work-in-Progress Session: Supporting Students To, Through, and Beyond Transitions

Background
Mental Health and Wellbeing (MHW) research in engineering undergraduate education contexts is in its infancy. Further, to this date, no quantitative questionnaire items have been specifically constructed and validated to measure the potentially unique aspects of MHW of engineering students. In this present study, the conceptual framework for an Engineering Undergraduate Subjective Wellbeing Questionnaire (EUSWQ) will be proposed. This proposed questionnaire will include 35 items that correspond to 7-factors or latent variables including faculty support, learning experiences, support environment, financial support, task organization, engineering practice opportunities, and task orientation.
Design/Method
In the fall semester of 2021 at a Western land grant institution, 8 semi-structured interviews of undergraduate engineering students were conducted to inform the development of an MHW questionnaire that could be specifically used with engineering undergraduate students. After conducting a thematic analysis of the students’ interviews, 7 factors or themes emerged that may capture the unique aspects of MHW in undergraduate engineering students. Next, these 7 factors were used to develop open-ended items for an online survey that was sent to all undergraduate students at the university. Survey data (N = 105) was collected in the Spring of 2022. Thematic analysis will be conducted on open-ended responses.
Results
Thematic analysis of the 8 student interviews resulted in identifying 7 factors that contributed to the subjective wellbeing of undergraduate engineering students. These factors included faculty support, earning experiences, financial support, task organization, support environment, engineering practice opportunities, and task orientation formed the analytical framework. These 7 factors will be the conceptual framework for the EUSWQ. Thirty-five items, 5 corresponding to each factor in the 7-factor framework will be identified through the analysis of the data acquired through anonymous responses (N = 105) to the 7 open-ended questions and will be proposed for validation in the paper draft.
Conclusion
The 7-factor conceptual framework and corresponding items proposed in EUSWQ will be the results of rigorous empirical research studies. With further testing, EUSWQ may become a useful tool to quantify and understand more completely the unique aspects of MHW of undergraduate engineering students.

Authors

Mr. Muhammad Asghar http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-2811-9172 Utah State University [biography]

Muhammad Asghar is a graduate researcher and a Ph.D. candidate in Engineering Education Department at Utah State University. He has a master's in clinical psychology, a master's in educational psychology, and a bachelor's in computer information systems engineering. His research interests consist of investigating undergraduate engineering students' mental health and well-being. He is also interested in research related to using different technical and non-technical methods to enhance the learning processes of undergraduate engineering students.
Dr. Angela Minichiello P.E. http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4545-9355 Utah State University [biography]

Angela (Angie) Minichiello is a military veteran, licensed mechanical engineer, and associate professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Utah State University. Her research examines issues of access, equity, and identity in the formation of engineers and a diverse, capable 21st century engineering workforce. Angie received an NSF CAREER award in 2021 for her work with student veterans and service members in engineering.
Daniel Kane http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0220-9962 Utah State University [biography]

Daniel Kane is a graduate student at Utah State University pursuing a PhD in Engineering Education with a concurrent master’s degree in Civil Engineering. His research interests focus around the study of spatial ability with an emphasis on identifying patterns of spatial strategies and measuring spatial ability in blind and low vision populations.
Dr. Oenardi Lawanto Utah State University [biography]

Dr. Oenardi Lawanto is a professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Utah State University, USA. He received his B.S.E.E. from Iowa State University, his M.S.E.E. from the University of Dayton, and his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Lawanto has a combination of expertise in engineering and education and has more than 30 and 14 years of experience teaching engineering and cognitive-related topics courses for his doctoral students, respectively. He also has extensive experience in working collaboratively with several universities in Asia, the World Bank Institute, and USAID to design and conduct workshops promoting active-learning and life-long learning that is sustainable and scalable. Dr. Lawanto’s research interests include cognition, learning, and instruction, and online learning.
Joshua Marquit Pennsylvania State University

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