Development of Survey Instrument to Assess Freshmen Engineering Students Understanding on Engineering Ethics

Abstract

Academic dishonesty among students, also known as cheating, has become a severe problem at undergraduate universities. According to study, engineering students are more likely to cheat in academia, and this is related to unethical conduct in profession. When this relation is viewed in the context of higher levels of academic misconduct among engineering graduates, the situation becomes even more significant for engineering instructors, experts, businesses, and community. To examine this concern, this study was conducted to analyze perception of ethics in freshman students with five factors: ethical environment on campus, impact of technology, ethical influence on faculty and education, importance and awareness of ethics, attitude towards cheating. In this study, a survey instrument was designed to hypothesizing the five factors listed above. The survey instrument was administered to freshmen engineering students at affiliated autonomous college in south India Hyderabad Institute of Technology and Management (HITAM) during spring 2021. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted to validate the factor structure of the survey instrument. The analysis revealed five factors as hypothesized with a minimum and maximum loading of 0.56 and 0.90. The internal consistency reliability index Cronbach’s α ranged from 0.81 to 0.89, representing a strong consistency. This survey instrument can be used in any education institutions to assess students’ understanding related to engineeringethics. Keywords: Freshman engineering students, engineering ethics, ethics education, ethical environment, cheating