Cross-sectional survey study of undergraduate engineering identity

Abstract

Identity is an increasingly popular lens for studying recruitment and retention in engineering. Most of the research conducted on modeling student development of engineering identity and related contributing factors has examined high school students and college freshmen. However, many engineering students drop out in the first two years, as they continue to shape or abandon their engineering identities throughout the course of their college careers. This paper explores engineering identity differences between lower- and upper-division undergraduate engineering students in mechanical and architectural/civil engineering at a large public institution (n=563). In this preliminary analysis, student responses were classified based on the designation of the course in which the surveys were completed: lower-division courses typically include freshmen and sophomores early in their engineering curricula, while upper-division courses typically include juniors and seniors and require lower-division courses as pre-requisites. This designation is established by the institution to distinguish gateway courses from major sequence coursework, since students are admitted directly to their specific engineering majors as first-year students. The new survey instrument borrowed previously validated scales for physics, math, and science identity to measure engineering identity directly. This survey included scales to measure both math and physics identity, multi-item scales thought to construct engineering identity (including direct measures), and background demographic information on the participants. During analysis, t-tests were used to compare differences in survey responses between the upper- and lower-division students, as well as between the mechanical and architectural/civil engineering students. Exploratory factor analysis identified 22 factors. The t-tests suggest that upper-division students exhibited a higher physics recognition by others while lower-division students exhibited a higher math interest, and global agency related to caring about others. However, the upper- and lower-division students did not exhibit significantly different responses to the engineering identity questions. Future work should separate data by year to further differentiate identity as students progress in the major. As engineering undergraduate identity research continues, it will be important to understand how engineering identity develops over all four (or more) undergraduate years. Examining the factors that contribute to successful identity development can be used to increase engineering retention rates by developing solutions that provide freshmen and sophomores opportunities to identify themselves as engineers at an earlier stage.