2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Previous research suggests that liberal arts institutions provide improved moral reasoning development in students compared with other types of institutions, but the reasons are not well understood. This work-in-progress paper presents initial data on a longitudinal study of moral reasoning development of both engineering and non-engineering students at a liberal arts institution.

We present the results of administering the Defining-Issues-Test Version 2 (DIT2) to engineering and non-engineering first-year students at a liberal arts institution. Descriptive statistics from the surveys are compared with national norms. Subpopulations of the survey respondents defined by demographic variables are compared and investigated for statistically significant differences. The variables explored include sex, political orientation, intended major, and co/extra-curricular activity participation. A regression analysis is used to examine relationships between DIT2 scores and selected variables.

Future work on this project will include a repetition of the DIT2 survey for the same respondents at the end of their second year in college, coupled with qualitative surveys and institutional data in a mixed-methods approach to facilitate identifying components of a liberal arts education that influence changes in the ethical reasoning scores over the course of their college experience.