2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Recent reports suggest a significant population of doctoral students drop out of their graduate programs [1] and face or develop significant mental health distress [2]. Evidence suggests that engineering students may experience these effects more prevalently than students in other domains [3] [4]. Stress plays a role in exacerbating mental health distress [5] and both engineering PhD programs [6] and the larger culture of academic engineering [4] [7] have been described as high stress environments where stress is enculturated. In the first year of our three‐year NSF RFE project, we interviewed doctoral engineering students to identify major stressors present in the doctoral engineering experience at the present study’s focal institution. In the second, current year of our project, we developed the Stressors for Doctoral Students Questionnaire – Engineering (SDSQ-E), a novel survey which aims to measure the frequency and severity of these top sources of stress for doctoral engineering students. The SDSQ-E was designed using the results of first year interviews and a review of the literature on stress for doctoral engineering students. In October 2022, we administered this survey to engineering doctoral students. Major sources of stress surveyed in the SDSQ-E include advisor-related stressors, class-taking stressors, research stressors, campus life stressors, and identity-related stressors. We present an overview of the development of the SDSQ-E measure, including descriptions of the stressor topics. Preliminary survey results are included, including a summary of participants, response trends, descriptive statistics, and reliability of subscales. Implications for practice including suggestions relevant to doctoral advisors based on our findings are presented.

[1] Lott, J. L., Gardner, S., & Powers, D. A. (2009). Doctoral student attrition in the STEM cields: An exploratory event history analysis. Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice, 11(2), 247–266.
[2] Levecque, K., Anseel, F., De Beuckelaer, A., Van der Heyden, J., & Gisle, L. (2017). Work organization and mental health problems in PhD students, Research Policy 46(4), 868-879.
[3] Meyer, M., & Marx, S. (2014). Engineering dropouts: a qualitative examination of why undergraduates leave engineering. Journal of Engineering Education, 103(4), 525-548. DOI: 10.1002/jee.20054
[4] Danowitz, A & Beddoes, K. (2020). In Their Own Words: How Aspects of Engineering Education Undermine Students’ Mental Health, Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN.
[5] Byrd, D. R., & Mckinney, K. J. (2012). Individual, interpersonal, and institutional level factors associated with the mental health of college students. Journal of American College Health, 60(3), 185-193.
[6] Bork, S. J., & Mondisa, J.-L. (2022). Engineering graduate students’ mental health: A scoping literature review. Journal of Engineering Education, 111( 3), 665– 702.
[7] K. J. Jensen and K. J. Cross, (2021). Engineering stress culture: Relationships among mental health, engineering identity, and sense of inclusion, Journal of Engineering Education, 110(2), 371–392.