2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 310: Improving the Validity of an Instrument to Measure Mental Health Help-Seeking Beliefs for Diverse Institutional Contexts

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session

National data show that engineering students experiencing mental health distress are significantly less likely than their peers to seek professional psychological help. While treatment gaps exist for cisgender men, persons of color, and first-generation students, disparities are further pronounced in engineering. Interventions targeted at reshaping engineering culture to support professional mental health help seeking could increase academic success and retention, while improving mental health of the workforce. Utilizing results from an NSF Research Initiation in Engineering Formation grant, this Research in the Formation of Engineers proposal applies a mixed-methods approach to improve and refine an Engineering Mental Health Help-seeking Instrument (EMHHI) based on the Integrated Behavioral Model (IBM) to characterize key mental health help-seeking beliefs in diverse undergraduate students. Through this project, we will identify key help-seeking beliefs that could be targets for mental health help-seeking interventions in varied institutional contexts nationally.
The EMHHI was designed to measure beliefs relevant to engineering students with diverse identities at the University of Kentucky, a research-focused predominantly White institution. Therefore, we first aimed to ensure that the instrument was inclusive of help-seeking beliefs of students at other institutions. Through collaborations with a Historically Black College or University a Hispanic-serving Institution, we conducted focus groups to identify novel beliefs that were not represented within the first version of the EMHHI. Through this process, beliefs were identified such as, “My seeking help from a mental health professional in the next 3 months…”: 1) would require me to work with someone who doesn’t understand my cultural background, 2) would reinforce negative stereotypes about people from my cultural background and 3) would make me feel like an imposter in engineering. These novel beliefs were incorporated into an improved version of the instrument and cognitive interviews were conducted to increase the clarity of the instrument. Importantly, cognitive interviews resulted in the improvement of the survey instrument for neurodiverse individuals. Through this study, we were able to improve the validity of an instrument to measure mental health beliefs across diverse institutional contexts. Moving forward, the instrument will be used in large-scale studies to determine mental health help-seeking beliefs that predict intention to seek help for a mental health concern. These beliefs will be integrated into mental health interventions with a goal of improving help seeking within the undergraduate engineering student population.

Authors

Dr. Sarah A Wilson University of Kentucky [biography]

Sarah Wilson is an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at the University of Kentucky. She completed her bachelor's degree at Rowan University in New Jersey before attending graduate school for her PhD at the University of Massachusetts.
Dr. Joseph H Hammer [biography]

Associate Professor of Counseling Psychology
Dr. Jerrod A Henderson http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-0501-5805 University of Houston [biography]

Dr. Jerrod A. Henderson (“Dr. J”) is an assistant professor in the William A. Brookshire Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Cullen College of Engineering at the University of Houston (UH). He began his pursuits of higher education at Morehouse College and North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University, where he earned degrees in chemistry and chemical engineering as a part of the Atlanta University Center’s Dual Degree in Engineering Program. While in college, he was a Ronald E. McNair Scholar, allowing him to intern at NASA Langley. He also earned distinction as a Phi Beta Kappa member and an American Chemical Society Scholar. Dr. Henderson completed his Ph.D. in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As a graduate student, he was a NASA Harriet G. Jenkins Graduate Fellow and mentor for the Summer Research Opportunities Program. Dr. Henderson has dedicated his career to increasing the number of students on pathways to pursue STEM careers. He believes that exposing students to STEM early will impact their lives and academic pursuits. He, along with Rick Greer, co-founded the St. Elmo Brady STEM Academy (SEBA). SEBA is an educational intervention that introduces underrepresented and underserved fourth and fifth-grade students and their families to hands-on STEM experiences. Dr. Henderson is the immediate past Director of the Program for Mastery in Engineering Studies (PROMES, pronounced “promise”), a program aimed at increasing engineering student achievement, engagement, and graduation rates. His research group seeks to understand engineering identity trajectories and success mechanisms throughout lifespans using action-based participatory research and novel methodologies such as photovoice, IPA, and draw-an-engineer and the development of research-informed interventions to improve student success. He was most recently recognized by INSIGHT Into Diversity Magazine as an Inspiring STEM Leader, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences (LAS) Outstanding Young Alumni Award, Career Communications Group with a Black Engineer of the Year Award for college-level promotion of engineering education and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2023 to advance his work that centers engineering identities of Black men in engineering.
Dr. Sherri S Frizell Prairie View A&M University [biography]

Sherri S. Frizell is a Professor in the Computer Science Department at Prairie View A&M University. She holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Jackson State University and a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Software Engineering from Auburn University. Her research interests include responsible computing, STEM education, and the persistence of minorities and women in engineering.

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