Longitudinal investigation of moral disengagement among undergraduate engineering students: findings from a mixed-methods study

ABSTRACT

The importance of ethics education for undergraduate engineering students has been emphasized due to the manifold impacts of engineering on society. However, little is known about moral disengagement among engineering students, which could potentially lead to unethical engineering practice. Especially, it is not known how engineering students’ moral disengagement changes over the course of their college studies. In this paper, we conducted a longitudinal, mixed-methods study to investigate moral disengagement among undergraduate engineering students (n = 274) using Bandura’s theory of moral disengagement as a theoretical framework. We found engineering students’ overall propensity to morally disengage did not change over time, but there were statistically significant differences in student responses to three mechanisms of moral disengagement. We further investigated these findings with students’ interviews. Based on our results, we discuss various theoretical and practical implications.

KEYWORDS:

• Moral disengagement
• engineering ethics
• professional ethics education
• reflection
• engineering practice

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Peter Wesley Odom and Dr. Carla Zoltowski for their helpful contribution to the early phase of this work. We thank Drs. Stephanie Claussen and Michael C. Loui for helpful review and discussion.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

The de-identified project data that support the findings of this study are available through a direct request to the project PI (Brent K. Jesiek, email address: [email protected]), upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. 1449370, 1449470, 1449479, and 1449490. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.