Validity and Reliability Evidence of the Engineering Professional Responsibility Assessment Tool

Abstract

Background The development of social responsibility is important for educating holistic engineers, able to work across social and cultural boundaries to solve complex social issues. A way is needed to measure effective interventions for increasing social responsibility. Purpose/Hypothesis This article describes the Engineering Professional Responsibility Assessment (EPRA) instrument and provides evidence of its usability, validity, and reliability. The EPRA measures students' social responsibility attitudes and operationalizes the professional social responsibility development model, which describes the development of personal and professional social responsibility in engineers. The EPRA is intended to be used by educators to assess curricular interventions aimed at changing students' views of social responsibility. Design/Method The EPRA was developed in an iterative manner, using five different survey administrations with adjustments made to the instrument between each. Data from the final survey with 1,000 student responses were used to develop evidence of validity through expert feedback, structural equation modeling, multidimensional item response theory, and convergent evidence of validity and evidence of reliability using ordinal alpha. Results Evidence of validity and reliability indicates the appropriateness of the EPRA to measure social responsibility attitudes in engineering students. Conclusions The evidence of reliability and validity shows that the EPRA may be a useful tool to assess engineering student views of social responsibility, changes in those views over time, and the effectiveness of educational interventions intended to affect these attitudes.