2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The path to degree completion for graduate students in engineering disciplines is fraught with challenges, but one factor that consistently shapes their persistence and success is their advising relationship. The way students perceive the support they receive from this relationship can influence their self-efficacy concerning the competences needed to finish their dissertation, thesis or applied project report. Understanding the relationship between the student’s self-efficacy towards their culminating tasks and their perception of their advisor’s support is essential, as from a motivational standpoint, it can serve as a closer proxy for degree completion.

This research paper presents the development and validation of the Advisor Support and Self-efficacy for Thesis completion (ASSET) survey, which measures two constructs: Thesis Self-efficacy and Advisor Support. The former measures graduate students’ confidence to carry out activities to complete their final academic document, while the latter measures their perception of their advisor’s support. Items for these constructs were adapted and generalized to be relevant to either doctoral or master’s level students in engineering disciplines.

We collected survey responses from 170 engineering graduate students from a large public institution in the southwestern United States. Exploratory factor analysis yielded a single factor solution for the Thesis Self-efficacy construct, while Advisor Support yielded two factors, “Research support” and “Individualized support”. Future work includes the dissemination of the ASSET survey to various graduate engineering programs, to further explore the predictive relationships between our constructs and help institutions create strategies for the success of both their graduate students and their faculty.