Validity and Reliability Evidence of the Engineering Professional Responsibility Assessment Tool

Canney, Nathan E.; Bielefeldt, Angela R.

doi:10.1002/jee.20124

Cited by 76 publications

(89 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…There were also 12 items to assess attitudes toward professional social responsibility, selected from among the fifty Likert-items on the Engineering Professional Responsibility Assessment (EPRA) survey. 28 The selected items focused in the professional connectedness (6 items), costs/benefits (3 items), and analyze dimensions (3 items) of the Professional Social Responsibility Development Model (PSRDM). 29 The survey ended with demographic items including discipline(s) of their undergraduate and graduate degrees, and gender.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perspectives of Engineers on Ethical Dilemmas in the Workplace

Bielefeldt

Canney

2016 ASEE Annual Conference &Amp; Exposition Proceedings

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The research questions explored in this study were: To what extent do engineers feel that they are confronted with ethical dilemmas at work? Did ethical dilemmas contribute to changing jobs or careers? Did these issues vary between types of engineering jobs, engineering disciplines, or gender? Survey responses were received from 504 individuals and represented 719 different jobs. For 31% of the jobs, individuals indicated that they never felt that they had been confronted with an ethical or moral dilemma regarding how their work impacted people, society, and/or the environment. This may truly reflect a lack of these circumstances, or may indicate that some individuals are not adept at recognizing such issues. For 34% of the jobs, ethical/moral dilemmas were encountered infrequently and were not of significant personal concern, compared to ethical/moral dilemmas encountered infrequently but of significant personal concern in 16% of the cases. Smaller percentages of the jobs were reported to have frequent ethical dilemmas that were and were not of significant personal concern; 9% and 8%, respectively. Finally, 2% indicated that the moral/ethical dilemma was the primary reason that they had left their job. These cases might reflect that the individual was in moral distress, feeling powerless to pursue what they believed to be an ethical course of action. The frequency and degree of concern of ethical dilemmas encountered varied between job sectors and engineering disciplines, but not by gender. Informing students about the likelihood of encountering ethical dilemmas might better prepare them for these challenges. BackgroundEngineering ethics in the workplace are of critical importance. Recently the news has been rife with examples of engineering problems and failures -faulty airbags 1,2 , the Volkswagen emissions "defeat device" to evade environmental regulations 3 , construction of a new Veterans Affairs Hospital in Colorado wildly mismanaged 4 , issues with the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge 5 , the Deepwater Horizon oil spill 6 , the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans 7 . These cases all include elements related to engineering ethical issues. It is unclear that the engineers in these cases had sufficient education to prepare them to act for the best interest of society and the environment. One engineering educator has noted:A traditional education does little to prepare you for morally courageous action… our obligation as individuals to speak out and correct wrong-doing and injustices… We've created an entire class of people to whom we outsource the need to speak out… [but] if you are part of that team, however small and unsuspecting your role, and you have a conscience, you bear partial responsibility for that outcome. With increasing specialization and complexity, the only truly effective police are those that have the expertise and those that are working on the inside…. You can't legislate morality. (Marc Edwards 8 )

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perspectives of Engineers on Ethical Dilemmas in the Workplace

Bielefeldt

Canney

2016 ASEE Annual Conference &Amp; Exposition Proceedings

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“…Using the Engineering Professional Responsibility Assessment (EPRA) tool 12 , engineering students at 17 universities with ABET-accredited engineering degrees were surveyed in the spring of 2014. Students representing most engineering majors and all undergraduate academic ranks were solicited using an online survey tool and over 1880 undergraduate students completed the survey (1180 male, 661 female, 257 first-year, 522 sophomore, 536 junior, & 553 senior).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Volunteerism in Engineering Students and Its Relation to Social Responsibility

Canney¹,

Bielefeldt²

2015 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition Proceedings

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Addressing how engineering students view their role in society, their social responsibility, is seen as a central aspect toward creating holistic engineers who are able to address complex social issues. The Professional Social Responsibility Development Model (PSRDM) provides a framework for social responsibility development in engineers. Included in this model is a cycle where feelings of professional obligation to help others are enhanced through engaging in service. This study set out to characterize volunteerism among engineering students and to attempted to relate community service activities with views of social responsibility.Data for this study were collected through the Engineering Professional Responsibility Assessment (EPRA) which was developed to operationalize the PSRDM. The survey was distributed to undergraduate engineering students at 17 universities in the spring of 2014. Over 1880 undergraduate students from a diversity of majors and academic ranks completed the survey, including Likert-type items measuring their views of social responsibility and detailing their previous volunteer histories by both activity and frequency. Students reported their level of participation in 17 different volunteer or community service activities during college, or could write-in their own activity. The most frequently cited activities were: unpaid tutoring of college students; tutoring elementary or secondary children, and donating blood (40-47%). A high percentage of students (25-35%) also participated in service-learning projects, community service via a professional society (ASCE, ASME, AAEE, etc.), unpaid coaching or sports camp volunteer, food bank volunteer, or a short term on-site service project (i.e. spring break service trip, EWB/ESW in-country work). Thirty-six percent of the students also wrote-in a unique service activity. The median activity level during college for most of these common community service activities was more than twice but not routinely. Only 6.5% of the students reported no level of participation in volunteer or community service activities.

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“…The Engineering Professional Responsibility Assessment (EPRA) tool was used to gather the data for this paper 9 . In the 2014 spring term, EPRA was distributed electronically to engineering undergraduate students at 17 ABET accredited universities.…”

Section: Data Collection and Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Results from these Likert items are not discussed in this paper, but may be found in other publications by the authors (e.g. 7,9 ). After the Likert items, students were asked "Are there any college classes that you have found influential to your views of social responsibility?"…”

Section: Data Collection and Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Which Courses Influence Engineering Students' Views of Social Responsibility?

Russu¹

2015 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition Proceedings

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Many professional bodies are calling for engineering education to develop holistic engineers, trained in more than just technical content. Educational expectations include ethics and understanding social context, as well as attitudinal dispositions such as tolerance and thoughtfulness. These skills and dispositions add increased complexity and difficulty to the education of engineers beyond teaching only technical content. Moreover, there may be significant disconnects between what engineering faculty think they are teaching and what students are in fact learning. In looking at student learning versus faculty teaching, student responses to an open ended question about which, if any, courses had been influential to their views of social responsibility were examined. The ways in which engineers see their role in society, their social responsibility, is seen as one way to examine larger student views which may positively or negatively influence many of the professional and attitudinal dispositions which are now goals of engineering education.The Engineering Professional Responsibility Assessment (EPRA) tool was distributed to undergraduate engineering students across all majors and all academic years at 17 universities in the spring of 2014 to assess student views of social responsibility. In total, 1885 undergraduate students completed the survey. One question on this survey asked if there were any college classes that the student found influential to his/her views of social responsibility. Forty-three percent of the students said that no classes had been influential to their views of social responsibility. If the student answered yes, an open-ended question then asked the student to describe what courses had been influential and in what ways. These 1224 open-ended responses were coded using emergent coding strategies. Inter-rater reliability for the code book was examined. Codes focused on the type of course (engineering course, humanities course, senior design, first-year), the topic of the course (e.g. sustainability, energy, religion, ethics), and teaching pedagogy (e.g. service-learning, case-studies, project-based).It is concerning that 42% of the engineering students indicated that no courses in their undergraduate studies influenced their views of social responsibility. Of the seniors who completed the survey, 37% indicated that no courses had influenced these views. Of those who were influenced, the most common courses were engineering courses (44%) and humanities courses (44%). Doing design work (11%), projects (9%) and service learning (8%) were the most common educational approaches cited, while case studies were rarely cited by students. Ethics (24%) was the most common topic in student responses, with environment (8%) and sustainability (6%) the next most common. The benefit of this examination is to see where students are being influenced with respect to their social responsibility. Because many of the courses influencing students were outside of engineering, it is unclear how these may infl...

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Validity and Reliability Evidence of the Engineering Professional Responsibility Assessment Tool

Cited by 76 publications

References 25 publications

Perspectives of Engineers on Ethical Dilemmas in the Workplace

Perspectives of Engineers on Ethical Dilemmas in the Workplace

Volunteerism in Engineering Students and Its Relation to Social Responsibility

Which Courses Influence Engineering Students' Views of Social Responsibility?

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