2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This research paper describes the development and initial validation of a questionnaire to assess students’ attitudes toward engineering and their appreciation of the sociotechnical nature of engineering. The questionnaire was developed in light of the increasing need for a diverse engineering workforce that is adequately prepared with a range of skills required to solve complex, interdisciplinary, sociotechnical engineering problems. Questionnaire data from 314 undergraduate engineering students at a small private university were used for psychometric analysis. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) revealed a six-factor structure. Three factors relate to students’ attitudes: (1) academic self-confidence and self-efficacy; (2) sense of belonging in engineering; and (3) attitudes toward persisting and succeeding in engineering. The other three factors focus on: (4) students’ understanding of the broad nature of engineering; and how they appreciate the importance of (5) non-technical and (6) technical skills in engineering. Internal consistencies for each of the six subscales, measured by Cronbach’s α, ranged from 0.751 to 0.878; average discrimination indices ranged from 0.509 to 0.688. The development of this questionnaire affords researchers the opportunity to more deeply explore students’ attitudes toward and perceptions of engineering, as well as the relationship among these two phenomena.