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transcript
EngineeringEducation
International Diversity in Graduate Engineering Education: Development of
a Multi Institutional Survey
Erin Crede
Maura Borrego
Department of Engineering Education, Virginia Tech
Presentation for the 2010 FIE Conference
Funded by National Science Foundation
EEC-0934643
EngineeringEducation
Overview of the Presentation
• Introduction
• Lessons from the Ethnography
• Creating the Instrument
• Recommendations for Survey Researchers
• Future Work
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Introduction of the Study
The overall purpose of this study is to investigate the role of international diversity in graduate engineering research groups
• Sequential Exploratory Mixed Methods Study
• QUAL QUANEthnography Survey
QUANT Data Analys
is
Mixing of Qualitative
and Quantitative Results
Data Collecti
on
QUANT
Results
QUAL QUAN
QUAL Data
Analysis
QUAL Resul
ts
Discussion of
Mixing
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Lessons from the Ethnography
• Conceptual Understanding
• Cultural Considerations
• Hypothesis Formulation
Results from the ethnographic observations and interviews were used to increase the validity of the instrument.
What did this tell us?
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Creating the Instrument
• Develop Questions• Operationalize variables• Customize question
wording for a diverse population
• Develop Hypotheses• Map constructs to
individual questions
Interviews and
Observations
Constructs
Hypotheses
Individual Questions
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Creating the Instrument
“I am in the minority in my research group”
“I value the international diversity of my research group”
“I am comfortable speaking up during research group meetings”
Some examples of Likert questions added to the instrument:
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Recommendations for Survey Researchers
• Relation of research question to variables you can measure
• Existing literature base
• Timeline and level of access to participants
• Diversity of the population
Factors to consider when choosing a qualitative method:
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Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge the support of the National Science Foundation who funded this research under IEECI 0934643
Questions?
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Future Work• Data Collection
• Complete at two of four universities• Survey live at the other two
• Data Analysis• Descriptive statistics• Multiple regression• Crosstabs and correlations
1000-1500 participants