Development of the Fit of Personal Interests and Perceptions of Engineering Survey (F-PIPES) Instrument (Fundamental)

Abstract The call to introduce young students, especially those underrepresented in engineering, to engineering has been answered with numerous pre-college engineering education intervention programs aimed at improving students’ attitudes toward engineering. Many of the engineering interventions show improved student attitudes and interest in engineering; however, we posit that these interventions may not be measuring the appropriate kind of interests. The development of the Fit of Personal Interests and Perceptions of Engineering Survey (F-PIPES) instrument aims to provide a measure of the alignment between students’ personal interests and their perceptions of engineering. Applying Holland’s Career Theory of Vocational Personalities and Work Environments, we developed and validated a survey instrument to measure students’ perceptions of engineering and then determined fit to their personal interests using an adaptation from an existing personal interest profiler. The survey was tested during a summer engineering workshop with 260 9-14 year-old students. The final F-PIPES instrument resulted in a 24-item engineering perceptions survey coupled with the 30-item personal interest assessment. This tool measures the fit between students’ personal interests and their perceptions of engineering. The results from the F-PIPES instrument as applied to the 10-session engineering workshop showed different levels of fit between interests and perceptions along gender and race/ethnicity demographics. The F-PIPES instrument provided insights about how an engineering intervention may appeal to the interests of diverse students. Going forward more testing with different student populations, different engineering interventions, and other varying contextual factors needs to be done to further validate the utility of this tool. Applying Holland’s Career Theory of Vocational Personalities and Work Environments, we developed and validated a survey instrument to measure students’ perceptions of engineering and then determined fit to their personal interests using an existing personal interests profiler. The survey was tested during a summer engineering workshop with 260 9-14 year-old students. The final F-PIPES instrument resulted in a 24-item engineering perceptions survey coupled with the 30-item personal interest profiler results. This tool measures the fit between students’ personal interests and their perceptions of engineering. The results from the F-PIPES instrument as applied to the 10-session engineering workshop show different fits between interests and perceptions along gender and race/ethnicity demographics. The F-PIPES instrument provided insights about how an engineering intervention may appeal to the interests of diverse students. Going forward more testing with different student populations, different engineering interventions, and other varying contextual factors needs to be done to further validate the utility of this tool.