More Like this

1. Examining the Structural Validity of the CD-RISC among Engineering Students

   Mr. Adurangba Victor Oje, Dr. Nathaniel (April 2020, Zone 1 Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education)

   null (Ed.)

   This work in progress study examines the structural validation of the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC). Resilience, an ability to respond positively to challenging situations, is an essential psychological attribute in responding to stressors. Students often encounter stressful situations that could influence their motivation to remain and succeed in an engineering degree. Developing and strengthening resiliency among engineering students is essential for their academic success in engineering. Participants included 150 undergraduate students enrolled in a foundational engineering course who completed an online survey of the resilience measure. A confirmatory factor analysis was performed to examine the structural validity evidence of the CD- RISC. Model fitness statistics based on CFI, TLI, RMSEA indicated that a five-factor model of the CD-RISC is acceptable. Convergent validity and discriminant evidence were examined using the AVE and MSV estimates. The analysis indicated some concerns with the validity evidence of the instrument. Implications of findings and future directions are discussed. 

   more » « less
2. Rescaling the Longitudinal Assessment of Engineering Self-Efficacy V3.0 for Undergraduate Engineering Students

   https://doi.org/10.1177/0734282919830564  

   Yoon, So_Yoon; Sorby, Sheryl_A (February 2019, Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment)

   Since its development in 2006, the Longitudinal Assessment of Engineering Self-Efficacy (LAESE) V3.0 instrument with six constructs indicated by 31 items has been a popular tool used in engineering education research in the United States. However, there has been lack of validity and reliability evidence in the literature beyond its initial development, with an indication of multicollinearity between its two engineering self-efficacy constructs. This study aimed to rescale the LAESE V3.0 through factor analyses after a modification of items, providing construct validity evidence for the revised instrument. With data from 997 engineering students at three institutions, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses resulted in the Revised LAESE V3.0, consisting of 16 items loading across four factors in a good model fit range: Engineering Self-Efficacy, Engineering Career Expectations, Sense of Belonging, and Coping Self-Efficacy. The nonlinear SEM (structural equation modeling) reliability coefficients for individual factors ranged from .76 to .84, with the overall Omega for the ordinal data of .92, demonstrating acceptable internal consistency reliability. 

   more » « less
3. Exploring the Validity of the Engineering Design Self-Efficacy Scale for Secondary School Students (Research To Practice)

   Lee, E.; Carberry, A. R.; Dalal, M.; Miller, M. J. (July 2021, 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   The purpose of this study is to re-examine the validity evidence of the engineering design self-efficacy (EDSE) scale scores by Carberry et al. (2010) within the context of secondary education. Self-efficacy refers to individuals’ belief in their capabilities to perform a domain-specific task. In engineering education, significant efforts have been made to understand the role of self-efficacy for students considering its positive impact on student outcomes such as performance and persistence. These studies have investigated and developed measures for different domains of engineering self-efficacy (e.g., general academic, domain-general, and task-specific self-efficacy). The EDSE scale is a frequently cited measure that examines task-specific self-efficacy within the domain of engineering design. The original scale contains nine items that are intended to represent the engineering design process. Initial score validity evidence was collected using a sample consisting of 202 respondents with varying degrees of engineering experience including undergraduate/graduate students and faculty members. This scale has been primarily used by researchers and practitioners with engineering undergraduate students to assess changes in their engineering design self-efficacy as a result of active learning interventions, such as project-based learning. Our work has begun to experiment using the scale in a secondary education context in conjunction with an increased introduction to engineering in K-12 education. Yet, there still is a need to examine score validity and reliability of this scale in non-undergraduate populations such as secondary school student populations. This study fills this important gap by testing construct validity of the original nine items of the EDSE scale, supporting proper use of the scale for researchers and practitioners. This study was conducted as part of a larger, e4usa project investigating the development and implementation of a yearlong project-based engineering design course for secondary school students. Evidence of construct validity and reliability was collected using a multi-step process. First, a survey that includes the EDSE scale was administered to the project participating students at nine associated secondary schools across the US at the beginning of Spring 2020. Analysis of collected data is in progress and includes Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) on the 137 responses. The evidence of score reliability will be obtained by computing the internal consistency of each resulting factor. The resulting factor structure and items will be analyzed by comparing it with the original EDSE scale. The full paper will provide details about the psychometric evaluation of the EDSE scale. The findings from this paper will provide insights on the future usage of the EDSE scale in the context of secondary engineering education. 

   more » « less
4. The Development of a Measure of Engineering Identity

   https://doi.org/10.18260/p.26122  

   Godwin, Allison (January 2016, ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   Measures of subject-related role identities in physics and math have been developed from research on the underlying constructs of identity in science education. The items for these measures capture three constructs of identity: students’ interest in the subject, students’ feeling of recognition by others, and students’ beliefs about their performance/competence in the subject area. In prior studies with late secondary and early post-secondary students, participants did not distinguish between performance beliefs (e.g., believing that they can do well in a particular subject) and competence beliefs (e.g., believing that they can understand a particular subject); therefore, performance/competence beliefs are measured as a single construct. These validated measures have been successful in predicting STEM career choices including physics, math, and engineering. Based on these measures of identity, literature on engineering identity, and my prior work on understanding engineering choice and belongingness through students’ science and math identities at the transition from high school to college, I developed a set of new engineering identity measures that capture and overall identification as an engineer, future engineering career identification, and students’ engineering-related interest, recognition, and performance/competence beliefs. I conducted a pilot survey of 371 first-year engineering students at three institutions within the U.S. during the spring semester of 2015. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed to examine the underlying structure of the piloted questions about students’ engineering identity. The measures loaded on three separate constructs that were consistent with the hypothesized constructs of interest, performance/competence and recognition. The developed items were used in a subsequent study deployed in the fall semester of 2015 that measured more than 2500 first-year engineering students’ attitudes and beliefs at four institutions within the U.S. The data on engineering identity measures from this second survey were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The results indicated that the developed measures do extract a significant portion of the average variance in the latent constructs and the internal consistency of the measures (Cronbach’s α) falls within the acceptable and better range. The development of these items provides ways for engineering education researchers to more deeply explore the underlying self-beliefs in students’ engineering identity formation through quantitative measures with strong evidence for validity. 

   more » « less
5. Toward a Measurement of Co-Curricular Support: Insights from an Exploratory Factor Analysis

   Hall, J.L.; Verdín, D.; Lee, W.C.; Knight, D.B.; Godwin, A.F. (April 2019, Collaborative Network for Engineering and Computing Diversity (CoNECD) Conference)

   The purpose of this work-in-progress paper is to share insights from current efforts to develop and test the validity of an instrument to measure undergraduate students’ perceived support in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The development and refinement of our survey instrument ultimately functions to extend, operationalize, and empirically test the Model of Co-curricular Support (MCCS). The MCCS is a conceptual framework of student support that demonstrates the breadth of assistance currently used to support undergraduate students in STEM, particularly those from underrepresented groups. We are currently gathering validity evidence for an instrument that evaluates the extent to which colleges of engineering and science offer supportive environments. To date, exploratory factor analysis and correlation for construct validity have helped us develop 14 constructs for student support in STEM. Future work will focus on modeling relationships between these constructs and student outcomes, providing the explanatory power needed to explain empirically how co-curricular supports contribute to different forms of student success in STEM. We hope that operationalizing the MCCS through this survey will shift how we conceptualize and offer student support, enabling college administrators and student support practitioners to evaluate their portfolio of student support efforts. 

   more » « less