2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Work-integrated learning (WIL) programs (e.g., Co-op programs, internships, and workforce development programs) provide students with crucial opportunities to build professional social networks. Based on social capital theory, we understand that students’ professional networks provide them access to career-related resources, information, and support. We utilize social capital theory and social cognitive theory to guide our understanding of how mentors support engineering students’ career development. Together, social capital theory highlights the need for students to build social networks with career professionals. Social cognitive career theory informs which mentoring efforts are instrumental for a student’s career development. The purpose of the study is to examine the item and scale level performance of the Mentoring Social Capital Instrument, an instrument developed to examine what career-related supports students access through their mentors. We ask the following questions: 1) to what extent are student interpretations of the Mentoring Social Capital items consistent with how the assessment questions are intended to be interpreted?; 2) to what extent do experts agree that the Mentoring Social Capital items are aligned with the theory? We conducted cognitive interviews with eight undergraduate students to explore the extent to which students interpreted the Mentoring Social Capital items. Additionally, expert review feedback was collected from 15 engineering education and educational psychology experts to determine how well items of the Mentoring Social Capital instrument align with the theoretical frameworks proposed. We made revisions to 20 items based on the cognitive interviews and expert review. The results of this study were used to improve the item clarity and interpretability of Mentoring Social Capital instrument for undergraduate engineering students in work-integrated learning programs. Future work will include piloting the Mentoring Social Capital scale with Co-op students at a large, midwestern R1 institution.