Celebrating Differences: A Conjoint Analysis of Senior Year Mechanical Engineering Students’ Occupational Preferences
Name
11162_2023_Article_9760.pdf
Size
2.12 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
f382b008497e0a43a0452737726f3d19
Author(s)
Magarian, James N.
Seering, Warren P.
Date Issued
November 6, 2023
Publisher
Springer Netherlands
Citation
Magarian, James N. and Seering, Warren P. 2023. "Celebrating Differences: A Conjoint Analysis of Senior Year Mechanical Engineering Students’ Occupational Preferences."
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Abstract
Given its ongoing struggles at attaining demographic diversity and its key role in nations’ economies, the engineering workforce receives considerable attention from researchers and policymakers. Yet, prior studies and STEM recruitment initiatives have often underemphasized the variety among available engineering jobs and careers. It therefore remains unclear which attributes of engineering work are most salient in shaping students’ choices to persist in or depart from engineering pathways. This study introduces a novel conjoint survey experiment conducted with over 1000 senior year mechanical engineering students. This randomized experiment allows the authors to disentangle supply-side and demand-side factors to assess engineering job attributes’ marginal influences on students’ occupational preferences, as well as to examine these attributes’ interaction effects with supply-side factors. Toward strengthening persistence in engineering pathways, findings suggest that broad STEM recruitment initiatives, though potentially advantageous in pre-college years, should give way to more targeted campaigns that increase university students’ awareness about key dimensions of variety across engineering work roles.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-023-09760-9
