Engineering student retention: Development of a validated, quantitative instrument for exploring the role of personal and institutional context

Abstract

Retention of engineering students is a much-studied subject. The bulk of existing literature focuses on students in large, Research-I institutions - arguably schools sharing a common context or educational dynamic. Current instruments available to study retention have not focused on how motivations, interests, and individual backgrounds (psychosocial and personal attributes) may vary with educational context (institutional attributes) and, as a result, may very well miss aspects of a student's learning experience that could be particularly important to retention. Studies from both engineering education and social sciences such as educational psychology fail to fully examine how the educational environment interacts with personal experiences and attributes among engineering students to influence retention among all students; of particular interest is retention of females, since this population of engineering students has consistently reflected higher attrition from the field of study. The role of context in the development of instruments for retention studies needs to be studied more thoroughly. For this work, we are developing a new survey instrument to explore the effects of context on engineering retention; this article describes the pilot test of the instrument. Seven factors related to retention, as reported in engineering education, science education, and educational psychology literature, were identified as relevant to measuring educational context and therefore selected for study: 1) Cultural influences, including family and friends 2) Recruitment activities to engineering, as experienced before entering college 3) Participation in engineering-related activities 4) Self-perception and self-efficacy 5) Motivations for studying engineering 6) Definitions of success, personally and academically 7) Perceptions of the learning environment. For each factor, a set of Likert scale survey stems was developed. In addition, demographic data were included. The stems were reviewed by an expert panel in accordance with best practice in the field of educational psychology, and the resulting instrument was pilot-tested with 224 engineering undergraduates. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was used for validation purposes. Future work will involve quantitative-analysis-driven modification of the instrument, followed by administration at multiple institutions with varying contexts and comparisons to further explore the role of context in engineering retention. We will add a qualitative research component to enrich our understanding of the role of context in student decision-making associated with undergraduate engineering program retention. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2008.