Development of the Leadership Self-efficacy Scale for Engineering Students

The purpose of this research paper is to develop and validate a leadership self-efficacy scale for engineering students. As the National Academy of Engineering identified leadership as one attribute that engineering students must develop by the time of graduation, at the university level, institutions have provided supplemental leadership programs that engineering students can take during college education period. However, there has been a lack of appropriate instruments to understand and diagnose the current approach and efforts of institutions to develop engineering students’ leadership. Therefore, the 69 items for a leadership self-efficacy scale was constructed to indicate six factors as representative aspects of leadership in engineering. With data from 173 engineering students, exploratory factor analyses identified an underlying factor structure of the scale with 38 items loaded onto one of five factors (Leadership Opportunity, Team Motivation, Engineering Practice, Innovative Changes, and Ethical Actions and Integrity), along with good reliability evidence.