The Association between Identity and Student Engagement in Engineering Undergraduate Students
type: CreativeWork
description: Background: Scholars have been becoming increasingly interested in understanding engineering identity among college students as a means to promote student engagement and preserve students in engineering majors. However, there is a lack of psychometrically strong instrument to empirically assess engineering identity. Moreover, the importance of multidimensional nature of student engagement has not been highlighted in engineering education research. Consequently, little is known about the association between engineering identity and student engagement. Purpose: Drawing on the identity formation theory (Crocetti, Rubini, & Meeus, 2008), the purpose of this cross-sectional study was twofold: (1) to adapt and validate the Utrecht-Management of Identity Commitments Scale (U-MICS) to assess college engineering identity and (2) to explore the relations of engineering identity with three facets of college student engagement (i.e., effort, course choice, and persistence). Methods: Two hundred and forty-one engineering undergraduate students (Mage = 22.36 years; 78.4% males) in a large southern urban public university in the United States completed paper-and-pencil and online surveys assessing their identity and student engagement. Results: The findings of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) confirmed the three-factor structure of engineering identity (i.e., commitment, in-depth exploration, and reconsideration of commitment) among engineering students by excluding one item related to in-depth exploration in the original scale. Good internal consistency was found for each subscale (α = .73 to .88). Regarding validity evidence for the U-MICS, results of Pearson correlation showed that commitment and in-depth exploration were positively correlated with self-efficacy (r = .19 to .42) and subjective task values (r = .47 to .56), whereas reconsideration of commitment was negatively correlated to self-efficacy (r = -.28) and subjective tasks values (r = -.19 to -.36). Juniors scored …
abstract: Background: Scholars have been becoming increasingly interested in understanding engineering identity among college students as a means to promote student engagement and preserve students in engineering majors. However, there is a lack of psychometrically strong instrument to empirically assess engineering identity. Moreover, the importance of multidimensional nature of student engagement has not been highlighted in engineering education research. Consequently, little is known about the association between engineering identity and student engagement. Purpose: Drawing on the identity formation theory (Crocetti, Rubini, & Meeus, 2008), the purpose of this cross-sectional study was twofold: (1) to adapt and validate the Utrecht-Management of Identity Commitments Scale (U-MICS) to assess college engineering identity and (2) to explore the relations of engineering identity with three facets of college student engagement (i.e., effort, course choice, and persistence). Methods: Two hundred and forty-one engineering undergraduate students (Mage = 22.36 years; 78.4% males) in a large southern urban public university in the United States completed paper-and-pencil and online surveys assessing their identity and student engagement. Results: The findings of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) confirmed the three-factor structure of engineering identity (i.e., commitment, in-depth exploration, and reconsideration of commitment) among engineering students by excluding one item related to in-depth exploration in the original scale. Good internal consistency was found for each subscale (α = .73 to .88). Regarding validity evidence for the U-MICS, results of Pearson correlation showed that commitment and in-depth exploration were positively correlated with self-efficacy (r = .19 to .42) and subjective task values (r = .47 to .56), whereas reconsideration of commitment was negatively correlated to self-efficacy (r = -.28) and subjective tasks values (r = -.19 to -.36). Juniors scored …
author: Li, Nan
language: eng
keywords: Identity, Engineering
date published: 2019-12
date modified: 2026-07-24T02:32:44Z
provider: University of Houston
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Houston

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: https://hdl.handle.net/10657/5565