Development of a Climate Survey for Engineering Doctoral Students from an Intersectional Approach: First-Round Validity Evidence
- Conference
- Location
-
Portland, Oregon
- Publication Date
-
June 23, 2024
- Start Date
-
June 23, 2024
- End Date
-
July 12, 2024
- Conference Session
-
Graduate Studies Division (GSD) Technical Session 7: Graduate Student Experiences
- Tagged Division
-
Graduate Studies Division (GSD)
- Tagged Topic
-
Diversity
- Permanent URL
-
https://peer.asee.org/47175
Paper Authors
So Yoon Yoon
University of Cincinnati
orcid.org/0000-0003-1868-1054
Dr. So Yoon Yoon is an assistant professor in the Department of Engineering and Computing Education in the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Cincinnati, OH, USA. Dr. Yoon received her Ph.D. in Gifted Education, and an M.S.Ed. in Research Methods and Measurement with a specialization in Educational Psychology, both from Purdue University, IN, USA. She also holds an M.S. in Astronomy and Astrophysics and a B.S. in Astronomy and Meteorology from Kyungpook National University, South Korea. Her work centers on elementary, secondary, and postsecondary engineering education research as a psychometrician, data analyst, and program evaluator with research interests in spatial ability, STEAM education, workplace climate, and research synthesis with a particular focus on meta-analysis. She has developed, validated, revised, and copyrighted several instruments beneficial for STEM education research and practice. Dr. Yoon has authored more than 80 peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings and served as a journal reviewer in engineering education, STEM education, and educational psychology. She has also served as a PI, co-PI, advisory board member, or external evaluator on several NSF-funded projects.
Julie Aldridge
The Ohio State University
orcid.org/0000-0001-6655-5971
My background and research interests are in organizational change, innovation, and leadership. My strengths are ideation and transdisciplinary teamwork. My current work focuses on organizational climate to better support the retention of engineering doctoral students from diverse groups to degree completion.
Nicole Else-Quest
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
orcid.org/0000-0002-4177-2395
Nicole M. Else-Quest is Associate Professor and Associate Chair of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A first-generation college student, Dr. Else-Quest earned her Ph.D. in developmental psychology at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. She uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to understand psychological gender differences, how they develop and shape participation in STEM, and how we can intervene to expand women's and girl's participation in STEM. She has written extensively on implementing intersectionality within social sciences research and adapting quantitative as well as qualitative methods to do so. Else-Quest is currently PI on two grants from the National Science Foundation, both focused on developing and implementing interventions to improve girls’ and women’s participation and persistence in STEM education from elementary school through doctoral training. In addition to her scholarly work, she is co-author of the undergraduate textbook, Psychology of Women and Gender: Half the Human Experience+ (Sage, 2022). She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and is Associate Editor of the journal Stigma and Health.
Joe Roy American Society for Engineering Education
Joseph Roy has over 15 years of data science and higher education expertise. He currently directs three national annual data collections at the ASEE of colleges of engineering and engineering technology that gather detailed enrollment, degrees awarded, research expenditures, faculty headcounts, faculty salary and retention data for the engineering community. He is PI of a NSF Advanced Technological Education funded grant to build a national data collection for engineering-oriented technician degree and certificate programs at 2-year institutions. Prior to joining the ASEE, he was the senior researcher at the American Association of University Professor and directed their national Faculty Salary Survey. He also developed a technical curriculum to train analysts for a national survey of languages in Ecuador while he was at the University of Illinois as a linguistic data analytics manager and member of their graduate faculty. He has a B.S. in Computer Science & Mathematics, a M.S. in Statistics from the University of Texas at San Antonio and a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Ottawa.
Abstract
This paper reports on the development procedure for a multi-factor climate survey for engineering doctoral students. As the U.S. engineering workforce does not reflect diversity, climate could be a lever that higher education leaders can use to target policies, practices, and procedures in doctoral programs to bolster the retention and success of students from historically excluded groups. Engineering doctoral programs are a type of organization, and the continuation of students in these programs through Ph.D. completion can be viewed as an issue of organizational commitment or member retention. From this perspective, organizational climate measurement can guide researchers and leaders in better understanding the climates affecting the experiences of students from underrepresented populations, such as members of women of color and the LGBTQIA+ community. Therefore, we used an intersectional approach to develop an organizational climate survey including a scale to assess multiple climate factors associated with organizational commitment or member retention, many of which are particularly salient to the experiences of students from marginalized or minoritized identities. This paper describes the procedure for developing the scale using an intersectional approach to probe the climate factors that may affect a doctoral student's commitment. We took several steps to create the scale, including face/content validity analysis, exploratory factor analyses for validity evidence, and internal consistency reliability evidence. The survey also includes demographic items to capture the respondents' complex social identities. During the Summer and Fall 2023, we collected our first pilot study data of 373 doctoral engineering students from 28 institutions. We will identify the scale's latent factor structure for construct validity evidence and evaluate internal consistency reliability evidence. The finalized survey is expected to contribute to developing a more diverse workforce in doctoral engineering.
Yoon, S. Y., & Aldridge, J., & Else-Quest, N., & Roy, J. (2024, June), Development of a Climate Survey for Engineering Doctoral Students from an Intersectional Approach: First-Round Validity Evidence Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/47175
ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2024 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015