Engineering students' perceptions of the future: Exploratory instrument development

Abstract

The purpose of this research paper is to understand how engineering students' long-term motivation, as previously described qualitatively in terms of student perceptions of future goals, can be explained quantitatively. Future Time Perspective (FTP) served as the theoretical framing for this work, and provides a model for how students' perceptions of the future can guide their actions in the present. The guiding questions for this work seek to understand how qualitative results about engineering students' FTP generalize to a quantitative survey for a different student population. To answer this research question, an exploratory instrument development mixed methods study with parallel sampling was conducted. Participants in the qualitative portion of the study, second year engineering students (n=9) at a southeastern land-grant institution, were interviewed about their perceptions of the future, perceptions of the present, and the interconnections between the future and present. Qualitative results informed development of a survey about student motivation. Participants in the quantitative portion of the study were from a western land grant institution. Students in a first year engineering course (n=360, response rate 52.8%) completed the Likert-type survey that assessed motivation related to their goal orientations, expectancies, and FTPs. Results of exploratory factor analysis indicated seven unique factors, three of which were related to FTP (perceptions of the future, perceived instrumentality of present tasks, and the influence of the future on the present). A k-means cluster analysis was then performed using these three FTP factors to determine what groupings may exist based on students' FTPs. The cluster analysis indicated three unique groupings that showed similar characteristics to the three groupings found through qualitative analysis. Results of this mixed methods study indicate that previous qualitative results are generalizable to a different engineering population. This work brings us a step closer to developing a valid instrument to assess motivation based on FTP for use alongside performance assessments, allowing for better understanding of how the affective domain influences cognitive performance in engineering.