Pedersen, B., & Rambo-Hernandez, K. (2022, August), Influence of Students’ Perceived Value of Diversity in Engineering on Intentions to Persist  Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--40441

\bibitem{asee_peer_40441}
  Pedersen, B., \& Rambo-Hernandez, K. (2022, August), \emph{Influence of Students’ Perceived Value of Diversity in Engineering on Intentions to Persist}
  Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Minneapolis, MN.
  10.18260/1-2--40441

Blaine Pedersen and Karen Rambo-Hernandez.  "Influence of Students’ Perceived Value of Diversity in Engineering on Intentions to Persist".  2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN, 2022, August.  ASEE Conferences, 2022.  https://peer.asee.org/40441 Internet.  25 Jun, 2024

\bibitem{asee_peer_40441}
  Blaine Pedersen and Karen Rambo-Hernandez.
  "Influence of Students’ Perceived Value of Diversity in Engineering on Intentions to Persist".
  \emph{2022 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Minneapolis, MN, 2022, August}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2022.
  https://peer.asee.org/40441 Internet.  25 Jun, 2024

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_40441
author = "Blaine Pedersen and Karen Rambo-Hernandez"
title = "Influence of Students’ Perceived Value of Diversity in Engineering on Intentions to Persist"
booktitle = "2022 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2022"
month = "August"
address = "Minneapolis, MN"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/40441}
number = {10.18260/1-2--40441}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - The following describes a research paper. Recruiting and retaining a diverse and skilled labor force in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields is a national concern; the economic prosperity and global competitiveness of the U.S. hinges greatly on these enterprises—especially engineering. Many engineering occupations require post-secondary education, and unfortunately, attrition from engineering degree programs continues to plague students. Understanding why students engage and persist in engineering is increasingly studied under the social cognitive career theory (SCCT).

The current study tests an elaborated SCCT model to advance our knowledge of the psychosocial factors that influence engineering students' intentions to persist among a sample of undergraduates primarily in their first year. Within the framework of the SCCT, self-efficacy (i.e., one’s personal belief in their ability to attain their goals), outcome expectations (i.e., anticipated consequences of one’s actions), and career-relevant interest are posited to predict career-oriented goals. Further, the effect of outcome expectations on goals is expected to be mediated by student career-relevant interests.

Although values are theoretically incorporated into outcome expectations, popular measures of outcome expectations often fail to fully conceptualize this construct. Outcome expectations encapsulate three types of outcomes: physical-outcomes (e.g., financial gain), social-outcomes (e.g., status), and self-outcomes (e.g., satisfying personal values). Physical-outcomes receive the most attention, while self-outcomes are routinely ignored. Interestingly, prior studies indicate many reasons for engineering students to value diversity within engineering are directly related to both physical-outcomes—such as addressing the needs of consumers and improving the bottom line—and self-outcomes—such as doing the morally right thing. Therefore, we decided to test an expanded SCCT model that included measures of personal values—specifically, students’ perceived value of diversity in engineering—as predictors of interests of career-oriented goals. While we added both expected physical-outcomes and self-outcomes for valuing diversity in the model, we proposed expected physical outcomes of valuing diversity in engineering would (a) moderate the relationship between outcome expectations and career-relevant interest and (b) strengthen the indirect relationship between outcome expectations and career-oriented goals through interest (moderated mediation).

To address our hypotheses within the elaborated SCCT model, we employed path analyses to test a conditional process model. As hypothesized, the relationship between outcome expectations and interest was moderated by students' expected physical outcomes of valuing diversity in engineering—after adjusting for self-efficacy, engineering identity, and students’ expected self-outcomes for valuing diversity in engineering. Furthermore, we used a bias-corrected and accelerated bootstrapping technique with 10,000 replicates to test the moderated mediation of outcome expectations on career-oriented goals at three levels of the moderator—students’ externally motivated reasons for valuing diversity in engineering. We find that the completely standardized indirect effect of outcome expectations on career-oriented goals ranges from 0.11 to 0.24—a small to medium indirect effect size.

Together, our findings indicate that students’ perceived value of diversity for physical outcomes in engineering as it is relevant to their outcome expectations for a career in engineering positively influences students’ career-oriented goals and highlights the potential need for a more complete conceptualization of outcome expectations when testing predictions within the SCCT.

Key-words: Social Cognitive Career Theory, Persistence, Diversity

AU  - Blaine Pedersen
AU  - Karen Rambo-Hernandez
CY  - Minneapolis, MN
DA  - 2022/08/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Influence of Students’ Perceived Value of Diversity in Engineering on Intentions to Persist
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/40441
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--40441
ER  -