Self Efficacy Of Women Engineering Students ? Three Years Of Data At U.S. Institutions

This paper describes the results of three years of engineering self-efficacy data collected from engineering students at five institutions across the U.S. Results indicate that while students show positive progress on some self–efficacy and related subscales, they show a decrease on isolation subscale from the first to second measurement period. It is also notable that there are almost no gender differences and that self efficacy seems to be related to participation in extracurricular activities and student plans to persist in the degree. Background Self-efficacy has been found to be an important factor in the success of women studying engineering 1,2 .Although efficaciousness applies to any situation, it is particularly important in choosing and executing constructive actions in situations that are perceived as negative or a barrier to success (e.g. lack of a meaningful role in a team project). Given that women are generally under-represented in engineering classrooms, a strong sense of efficacy can help them to persist in such situations. This paper reports on three years of engineering self-efficacy data collected from male and female engineering students at five institutions across the United States. The third year of data includes male respondents who are compared to their female counterparts. We measured selfefficacy via the LAESE survey instrument (longitudinal assessment of engineering self-efficacy; see AWEonline.org). Self-efficacy and Engineering Self-Efficacy Self-efficacy is an extensively researched psychological construct grounded in social cognitive theory. Self-efficacy, as defined by Albert Bandura 3 “refers to beliefs in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments” (Bandura 4 , p.3). Bandura 3 claims that self-efficacy determines “the courses of action people choose to pursue, how much effort they put forth in given endeavors, how long they will persevere in the face of obstacles and failures, their resilience to adversity, whether their thought patterns are selfhindering or self-aiding, how much stress and depression they experience in coping with taxing environmental demands, and the level of accomplishments they realize.” (p. 3) In fact, a substantial amount of research is available to support these claims. Most relevant to women in engineering is the prolific research on self-efficacy beliefs in relation to academic achievement 4 and to career choice 6 . The self-efficacy research literature makes a convincing case that a strong sense of self-efficacy is integral to all students’ entry and persistence in engineering. Selfefficacy is hypothesized to come from four sources – two being more influential than the others. The most influential are mastery and vicarious experiences; social (including verbal) persuasion and physiological states (e.g. eliminating fear reactions can improve efficacy). The term “self-efficacy” is often used interchangeably with several others, notably “confidence”. Understanding the differences in these words is important in accurately interpreting the research P ge 12262.2 literature and in developing programs or activities to influence self-efficacy, as well as accompanying assessment instruments. Confidence refers only to the strength of certainty of one’s beliefs, but does not require a positive outcome—for example, a person may be absolutely confident in failure 3 . Although the term “confidence” is not synonymous with self-efficacy, it can be understood as a component of self-efficacy when expressed positively. Literature about the experiences of women in engineering frequently addresses self-efficacy and its related constructs (e.g. confidence, self-esteem) showing a general pattern of loss emerges throughout the engineering education. Women enter engineering reporting high levels of selfconfidence and self-esteem 7 . Their self-confidence declines precipitously during the first year and, although it does begin to elevate, it will never again reach the same heights 8 . During this time, women compare themselves unfavorably to their male peers and judge themselves more harshly than the men judge themselves 9 . Women are aware of this and identify low selfconfidence as a major barrier to completing their engineering degree 10 . Women who leave engineering consistently express less confidence in their abilities than the men and women who stay, regardless of the fact that their actual performance is the same or better than their peers who do not leave 8,11 . The discouraging nature of low-self confidence is reflected in the fact that women faced with actually failing a course are likely to leave the engineering program altogether, while their male peers are more likely to repeat the course and continue to pursue their engineering degree. While gender differences in “confidence” are often reported 7 , studies that examine gender differences in self-efficacy of students already enrolled in engineering programs show mixed results. In contrast to studies that did not find gender differences for engineering self efficacy or sources of efficacy 12 , several studies did find gender differences in self-efficacy of engineering students in relation to participants’ perceived sources of self-efficacy. Bradburn 13 found differences in self-efficacy among women and men, partially due to differences in negative persuasion (e.g. statements indicating that women can’t do certain things) and anxiety signals. These differences were strong enough that, when the self-efficacy differences were eliminated statistically, gender differences in attrition were also eliminated. Zeldin and Pajares 14 found gender differences in self-efficacy sources through their qualitative study of men and women who had entered into and continued to succeed in SMET professional careers. Narrative analysis revealed that men perceived mastery experiences as critical to their self-efficacy beliefs, while women valued verbal persuasion and vicarious experiences (e.g. experiencing a task or activity “second hand” through someone else’s accomplishment of it). Besterfield-Sacre 15 used a validated instrument with first year engineering students that measured 13 attitudes—five of which can be classified as related to efficacy. Women exhibited lower scores on basic engineering skills and knowledge, problem solving ability and engineering abilities—although these self-reported ability measures results are\in conflict with actual measures of their ability and preparedness, which showed women did not differ from men on academic ability. Women showed higher scores on study habits for the first data collection in the study. Similarly, Grandy’s 16 study of SME seniors showed women with higher efficacy in two non-technical area skills—organizing work and time spent on homework. For the other eight measures in his study, men and women were quite similar. A recent mixed methods study from Hutchison et al. 17 (2005) also found gender differences in sources of self-efficacy with P ge 12262.3 substantial differences in how many men and women attributed computing abilities as either a positive or negative contributor to self-efficacy. Highly validated instruments for self-efficacy have produced different results. Hackett et al.’s 18 work examined SME vocational self-efficacy and academic milestones self-efficacy for 197 students and found no significant gender differences for either construct. Meinholdt and Murray’s study 19 was based on Hackett’s instrument and found a trend (p < .07) that favored men for academic self-efficacy but no gender differences for vocational self-efficacy. Although researchers seem to agree that it is an important concept, the research results show a mixed view of gender differences for engineering self-efficacy. Further, these studies vary based on the degree of validation of the instruments used, the number of institutions examined (most were single institution), and overall there are few that gathered data from the same students more than once (Besterfield-Sacre 15 is an exception). Given these results, this study uses a validated measure of engineering self-efficacy to women and male engineering students at five institutions and further analyzes the results based on pertinent sample characteristics: ethnicity, school and year in school. Further examination of self-efficacy differences by year standing are warranted given the prior pattern of “loss” in similar concepts such as confidence. Examining potential differences between schools is of interest in order to determine if certain schools demonstrate different patterns of self-efficacy trends, which may in turn be an indicator of differing climates that may either contribute or detract from self-efficacy. Lastly, prior research has shown that self-efficacy beliefs can vary by race and ethnicity 20,21 ; thus additional exploration of this potential difference is warranted.