2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The paper category for this abstract is Work in Progress Empirical Research. Research experiences are known to facilitate positive outcomes on students’ academic performance, development of skills, persistence, and enhancement of career goals [1]. Although there is a plethora of research that assesses the value of particular undergraduate research experiences (URE) and the role that mentors can have on creating positive UREs [2], there are few studies that examine students’ expectations for and perceptions of research experiences, especially within the context of engineering. Likewise, existing survey instruments are primarily designed for program evaluation and focus on student outcomes and career aspirations [3]. Using Johnston’s [4] process for conducting secondary data analysis, we analyzed previously collected qualitative data that examined students’ self-perceptions of their researcher identity (Author) to identify constructs for a quantitative survey that can be utilized by education researchers and research mentors at multiple points across the students’ experience.

Our secondary data analysis was conducted using data from open-ended surveys with 154 undergraduate engineering students and interviews with 20 undergraduate engineering students with research experiences across six institutions. Our initial analysis focused on identifying instances or examples of four dimensions of researcher identity -- interest, performance, competence, and recognition. We developed working definitions of researcher identity and the four individual dimensions by analyzing previous work by Carlone and Johnson [5], Hazari [6], Godwin [9], and Authors. Then, we (first and second author) coded the interview data deductively in atlas.ti. After discussing our coding and resolving any disagreements, we sorted the coded text by categories within the individual dimensions of researcher identity. For example, recognition included recognition by research mentors, peers, and family/friends. For each of these categories, we drafted survey items staying close to participants own words and ensuring representation of all ideas within each category.

In this WIP, we will describe our process to draft survey items within one dimension of researcher identity using specific examples from our data. We hope that sharing the specifics of this process will support other researchers who are interested in developing quantitative survey items from qualitative data, especially because based on our review of the literature, there are limited resources that highlight the specifics of this process [5], [6]). In fact, in a systematic review of 371 articles on studies that used qualitative methods to generate quantitative surveys, no emergent analytic approach was identified, nor was there a clear record of how analyses were conducted, creating a methodological gap [6]. As we continue our work, we will draft items for the other three dimensions of researcher identity and then conduct focus groups with experts in identity, experts in psychometric analysis, and undergraduate students with research experience. The goal of our work is to develop a survey instrument to measure undergraduate engineering students’ researcher identities.