Psychometric Analysis of an Instrument to Study Retention in Engineering

Abstract

Although engineering programs admit highly qualified students with strong academic credentials, retention in engineering remains lower than most other programs of study. Addressing retention by modeling student success shows promise. Instruments incorporating noncognitive attributes have proven to be more accurate than those using only cognitive variables in predicting student success. The Student Attitudinal Success Instrument (SASI-I), a survey assessing nine specific noncognitive constructs, was developed based largely on existing, validated instruments. It was designed to collect data on affective (noncognitive) characteristics for incoming engineering students (a) that can be collected prior to the first year and (b) for which higher education institutions may have an influence during students’ first year of study. This chapter will focus on the psychometric analysis of this instrument. Three years of data from incoming first-year engineering students were collected and analyzed. This work was conducted toward investigating the following research questions: Do the scale scores of the instrument demonstrate evidence of reliability and validity, and what is the normative taxonomy of the scale scores of first-year engineering students across multiple years? Further, to what extent did the overall affective characteristics change over the first year of study?