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Engineering students entering graduate school are typically underprepared for the writing tasks involved completing a Ph.D. Previous work has shown that writing attitudes and confidence in writing skills correlate with likelihood of pursuing certain careers and persistence and attrition in the program. However, all work to date has considered graduate students all together: In this study we seek to understand potential differences in the ways that U.S. domestic students and international student (both those studying in the U.S. and those studying in other countries) so that researchers and faculty who teach engineering communication can better tailor their activities and approaches to teaching writing. A survey accessing the students writing approaches, concepts, and self-regulatory efficacy was distributed to engineering graduate students at universities in Japan and Norway. The results of this survey were then compared to the results of a similar survey taken by domestic engineering graduate students and international engineering graduate students studying in the U.S. Findings indicate that there are statistically significant differences between U.S. domestic engineering graduate students with international engineering graduate students for most of the engineering writing attitudinal factors studied, indicating that instructors should begin to tailor approaches differently for individual students. From a research perspective, we will continue to use these findings to investigate and illuminate cultural variations that can influence the writing process. 

The objective of this research paper is to present the development and validation of a short-form survey that can be used to easily assess primary attitudes that engineering students hold as they approach academic writing. Engineering writing is a competency that is often-cited as a crucial skill for engineers to develop but is often under-emphasized in undergraduate or graduate curriculum. The affective dimension of writing (feelings, emotions, writer’s block, and writing apprehension) can further complicate the process of writing for students who write infrequently. For graduate students, in particular, attitudes about writing have implications on career trajectory, persistence, and well-being in graduate school. The purpose of this research is to understand how graduate engineering student attitudes toward writing affect career trajectory, attrition, and persistence. Our prior research employs a series of previously-developed scales assessing various dimensions of writing attitudes and behaviors as a way to understand multiple dimensions of a student’s affective relationship with writing; however, the survey is long (~30 minutes) and can be time-consuming for researchers to analyze. Each of the scales within the survey studies an aspect of the writer’s attitudes. This research employs confirmatory factor analysis to develop a short form survey that gives accurate results, such that students can take a web-hosted writing attitudes survey and immediately be given their “writing attitude profile” with writing strategies tailored to their specific writing profile.