Kotla, B., & Stump, T. J., & Jenkins, C., & Kashani Motlagh, A. D., & Kecskemety, K. M., & Kajfez, R. L. (2025, June), WIP: Confirmatory Factor Analysis of Instruments to Measure Connections and Creating Value in First-Year Engineering Students  Paper presented at 2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Montreal, Quebec, Canada . 10.18260/1-2--57388

\bibitem{asee_peer_57388}
  Kotla, B., \& Stump, T. J., \& Jenkins, C., \& Kashani Motlagh, A. D., \& Kecskemety, K. M., \& Kajfez, R. L. (2025, June), \emph{WIP: Confirmatory Factor Analysis of Instruments to Measure Connections and Creating Value in First-Year Engineering Students}
  Paper presented at 2025 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition , Montreal, Quebec, Canada .
  10.18260/1-2--57388

Bhavana Kotla, Tyler James Stump, Connor Jenkins, Abbey Darya Kashani Motlagh, Krista M Kecskemety, and Rachel Louis Kajfez.  "WIP: Confirmatory Factor Analysis of Instruments to Measure Connections and Creating Value in First-Year Engineering Students".  2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Montreal, Quebec, Canada , 2025, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2025.  https://peer.asee.org/57388 Internet.  27 Aug, 2025

\bibitem{asee_peer_57388}
  Bhavana Kotla, Tyler James Stump, Connor Jenkins, Abbey Darya Kashani Motlagh, Krista M Kecskemety, and Rachel Louis Kajfez.
  "WIP: Confirmatory Factor Analysis of Instruments to Measure Connections and Creating Value in First-Year Engineering Students".
  \emph{2025 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition , Montreal, Quebec, Canada , 2025, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2025.
  https://peer.asee.org/57388 Internet.  27 Aug, 2025

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_57388
author = "Bhavana Kotla, Tyler James Stump, Connor Jenkins, Abbey Darya Kashani Motlagh, Krista M Kecskemety, and Rachel Louis Kajfez"
title = "WIP: Confirmatory Factor Analysis of Instruments to Measure Connections and Creating Value in First-Year Engineering Students"
booktitle = "2025 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition "
year = "2025"
month = "June"
address = "Montreal, Quebec, Canada "
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/57388}
number = {10.18260/1-2--57388}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - This Work in Progress paper will describe the initial steps of validating an instrument to measure Connections and Creating Value skills in undergraduate engineering students. To effectively tackle global challenges and meet industry demands, it is crucial for today's engineering graduates to possess both technical expertise and professional skill competencies. Cultivating an entrepreneurial mindset and associated behaviors in first-year engineering students is one step towards fostering students' professional skill development and preparing them for their future career roles. This study examines the use of two survey instruments designed to measure entrepreneurial mindset (EM) constructs, such as Connections and Creating Value in engineering students. Grounded in the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN) definition of EM, two indirect surveys were developed and implemented in a first-year engineering program across multiple cohort years. A Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) will be conducted using the data collected from this first-year engineering course.  
Using the KEEN definitions and EM learning objectives developed within the network, two survey instruments were developed to measure Connections and Creating Value. The Connections survey instrument developed had 18 items, and the Creating Value survey instrument had 22 items. Based on a previous study, the EFA analysis technique was used to identify factors associated with each construct. This was completed with data from an Autumn 2021 first-year engineering cohort with ~215 full responses to each survey. The resulting EFA identified four factors for Connections and three factors for Creating Value. However, this data only included one cohort and thus was limited in its findings. While the number of responses met the ratio of 10 responses per item for an EFA accepted in multiple sources as the ideal minimum, higher responses are often preferred. Since Autumn 2021, this data collection has been repeated for Autumn 2022, 2023, and 2024, resulting in an additional 700+ student responses. These cohorts will be used for the CFA in this study. Overall, this work-in-progress study is a continuation of previous work aimed at refining and validating the survey instruments.  
The results from this study will bolster the efforts to expand the use of EM-specific assessment instruments across other institutions implementing an EM, standardize assessments of the entrepreneurial mindset constructs, enable researchers to make comparisons across different groups, and broaden the use of these tools across various disciplines. The final paper will include a presentation of the CFA results and recommendations for further validation of the instruments. 
AU  - Bhavana Kotla
AU  - Tyler James Stump
AU  - Connor Jenkins
AU  - Abbey Darya Kashani Motlagh
AU  - Krista M Kecskemety
AU  - Rachel Louis Kajfez
CY  - Montreal, Quebec, Canada 
DA  - 2025/06/22
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - WIP: Confirmatory Factor Analysis of Instruments to Measure Connections and Creating Value in First-Year Engineering Students
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/57388
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--57388
ER  -