Cross-Validation of a Global Citizenship Scale: Constructs for Evaluating Undergraduate Engineering Perspectives

Abstract

In this effort, an assessment tool designed for researchers to assess global citizenship values among undergraduate students is cross-validated. Past research shows that engineering students can be resistant to the introduction and addition of global citizenship components into the classroom including social responsibility, environmental sustainability, and economic equality. While some studies have delved qualitatively into how engineering undergraduates approach, accept, and understand global values including sustainability, this study seeks to evaluate a quantitative assessment tool in its ability to measure global citizenship values in a consistent manner for a wide variety of populations. With a validated assessment tool for global citizenship, undergraduate engineering students can be evaluated on their knowledge of critical global problems, but also their sense of responsibility for and willingness to engage in solutions to these problems. To cross-validate this scale, 438 students from four different colleges and schools within one large research university in the Pacific Northwest were surveyed using scale items designed to evaluate global citizenship. Participants represented majors in Engineering, Education, Business, and Environment; these fields were selected in order to validate the scale among a diverse pool of students which differed significantly from the original pool of students used to develop these global citizenship constructs. Factor analyses on this dataset produced 9 distinct measures of such values. Of 62 initial items (42 drawn from the original scale and 20 newly written items), 39 items remained after factor analysis while 23 items were discarded through rigorous assessment. Newly written items that referenced engineering-oriented global citizenship values and used similar language to the original scale were added in order to validate this scale’s appropriateness for use among engineering undergraduate students and add value for application to engineering education. Adding to previous research that used these survey items to study a more narrow population of students, this study provides measures of perspective, values, and beliefs regarding global citizenship that are likely to be reliable across diverse populations of undergraduates and be particularly relevant to engineering students.