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This work in progress paper describes preliminary findings from interviews intending to develop a definition of and method for measuring “engineering intuition.” Engineers are asked regularly in their profession to judge situations and predict or estimate results in order to minimize the potential for error. The need for this ability has been amplified with the pervasiveness of computer-aided problem solving in engineering. It is now mandatory for practicing engineers to quickly and accurately evaluate software results as part of the problem-solving process. We hypothesize that the ability to undertake such actions is heavily influenced by discipline-specific intuition, which has been previously explored in the disciplines of nursing and business management. The following study presents preliminary results attempting to define the construct of “engineering intuition.” Semi-structured interviews with practicing nurses, business managers, and engineers were conducted using: 1) implicit discussion around intuition informed by literature, and 2) critical incident technique, i.e., explicit discussion around the concept of intuition. Each interview sought to identify practitioner decision-making and problem-solving processes on the job. The combined dataset and supporting literature are planned to be used as the basis of our future work, which ultimately aims to develop a psychometrically tested instrument capable of accurately measuring engineering intuition. Dissemination of these preliminary results are intended to elicit feedback on our methodologies and findings before moving to the second phase of our research study.
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This content will become publicly available on August 1, 2026
Defining Engineering Judgment
In this research brief, we present our methods research on beginning to define engineering judgment. Judgment is critical to the field of engineering. However, when asked to define engineering judgment, engineers, including faculty, often cannot readily do so. Although judgment is a common term, it has been an elusive notion. This elusiveness may be due to the many conceptions of engineering judgment found in the literature. Unfortunately, given the lack of an agreed-upon, concrete definition for engineering judgment that integrates the various conceptions, its assessment relative to the formation of engineers has been limited. In this research brief, we describe our process to begin the development of an expert, consensus-driven definition for engineering judgment using the Delphi technique and the various conceptions for engineering judgment in the literature. A working or preliminary definition, which is being used to develop assessment and instructional materials for engineering judgment, is presented.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2348089
- PAR ID:
- 10630295
- Publisher / Repository:
- American Society for Engineering Education
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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