EngineeringEducation

International Diversity in Graduate Engineering Education: Development of

a Multi Institutional Survey

Erin Crede

Maura Borrego

Department of Engineering Education, Virginia Tech

Presentation for the 2010 FIE Conference

Funded by National Science Foundation

EEC-0934643

EngineeringEducation

Overview of the Presentation

• Introduction

• Lessons from the Ethnography

• Creating the Instrument

• Recommendations for Survey Researchers

• Future Work

EngineeringEducation

Introduction of the Study

The overall purpose of this study is to investigate the role of international diversity in graduate engineering research groups

• Sequential Exploratory Mixed Methods Study

• QUAL QUANEthnography Survey

QUANT Data Analys

is

Mixing of Qualitative

and Quantitative Results

Data Collecti

on

QUANT

Results

QUAL QUAN

QUAL Data

Analysis

QUAL Resul

ts

Discussion of

Mixing

EngineeringEducation

Lessons from the Ethnography

• Conceptual Understanding

• Cultural Considerations

• Hypothesis Formulation

Results from the ethnographic observations and interviews were used to increase the validity of the instrument.

What did this tell us?

EngineeringEducation

Creating the Instrument

• Develop Questions• Operationalize variables• Customize question

wording for a diverse population

• Develop Hypotheses• Map constructs to

individual questions

Interviews and

Observations

Constructs

Hypotheses

Individual Questions

EngineeringEducation

Creating the Instrument

“I am in the minority in my research group”

“I value the international diversity of my research group”

“I am comfortable speaking up during research group meetings”

Some examples of Likert questions added to the instrument:

EngineeringEducation

Recommendations for Survey Researchers

• Relation of research question to variables you can measure

• Existing literature base

• Timeline and level of access to participants

• Diversity of the population

Factors to consider when choosing a qualitative method:

EngineeringEducation

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the support of the National Science Foundation who funded this research under IEECI 0934643

Questions?

EngineeringEducation

Future Work• Data Collection

• Complete at two of four universities• Survey live at the other two

• Data Analysis• Descriptive statistics• Multiple regression• Crosstabs and correlations

1000-1500 participants