Professional competencies in engineering: examining validity and measurement invariance of a scale

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to validate the factor structure of professional competencies in engineering and test the measurement invariance of these competencies across gender. Through a cross-sectional survey, 552 senior undergraduate students (287 males) responded to a 24-item professional competencies scale. The professional competencies included five dimensions, namely knowledge and reasoning of technical and engineering; personal skills and attitudes; professional and ethical skills and attitudes; interpersonal skills and attitudes; and skills of developing system, product, or process. Confirmatory factor analysis yielded that five-factor structure of professional competencies fitted to the data more suitably than the one-factor structure. Results supported the reliability and validity of all the subscales assessing professional competencies. Tests for measurement invariance of the five factors provided support for configural, metric, and scalar invariance across gender. Overall, the obtained factor structure provided evidence in support of the comparability of the model between male and female students.

KEYWORDS:

• Professional competencies
• validation
• measurement invariance
• engineering
• gender

Disclosure statement

The author advise no direct funding is associated with the research reported on this article.