The Career Support Scale for Women in Engineering (CSS-WE): Development and Validation With Engineering Students in Korea

Abstract

Career supports play a more critical role in the persistence of engineering students relative to perceived barriers, especially among women engineering students ( Fouad et al., 2016 ). Although vocational research on the academic and career development of women in engineering has grown in recent years in response to longstanding and persistent gender disparities in this field, there is a lack of gender-specific instrumentation to assess the perceived supports among women students. This study developed a 21-item Career Support Scale for Women in Engineering (CSS-WE) to assess the perceived supports of Korean women college students pursuing engineering. Using two independent samples of women engineering students, exploratory ( n = 306) and confirmatory ( n = 309) factor analyses supported a five-factor model of the CSS-WE: instrumental support, inclusive support, emotional support, informational support, and institutional and societal support. The results suggested that CSS-WE scores demonstrated strong internal consistency and construct validity. Implications for practice and future research related to supporting women students in engineering are discussed.