Goal setting as a means of improved mental health outcomes for materials and mechanical engineering students

Abstract

The mental well-being of undergraduate students is a growing concern among engineering programs. A recent study at a large public institution in the West found that 38% of engineering students who responded to a mental health survey (n~700) screened as high risk of serious mental illness. When broken down by major, 25% of the materials engineering student respondents were at high risk, and 28% of the mechanical engineering student respondents were at high risk, compared to 38% for the overall engineering population. To address this problem, we designed a study to understand the mental wellness goals important to materials engineering and mechanical engineering students. This study sought to answer the following questions: 1) what types of goals, related to mental well-being, are important to materials engineering and mechanical engineering students and 2) does incorporating a mental wellbeing assignment improve students' generalized self-efficacy beliefs? Our results indicate that participants' mental health goals centered around eight areas and focused on aspects of physical health such as sleep and exercise. While we did not observe a statistically significant increase in self-efficacy with the mental health action plan assignment, students with lower initial self-efficacy scores showed bigger increases compared to students with higher initial self-efficacy scores. This result suggests that these types of assignments may preferentially benefit students with low self-efficacy.