2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The correlation of gender and spatial skills has been debated considerably in recent years. To add some insight to this debate, we examine the mental rotation skill of a group of first-year engineering undergraduate students at a large, public university. Using accuracy information from an online version of the Purdue Spatial Visualization Test: Rotations (PSVT:R) and self-reported gender, we performed multiple structural equation model (SEM) analyses based on a previously developed model. The aim of this work was to examine any differences that may exist between groups of test-takers, best represented by multi-group SEM; however, in spite of numerous efforts, insights into the proposed research questions could not be gained.