Differences in Engineering Students’ Views of Social Responsibility between Disciplines

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine differences in student views of social responsibility by discipline, looking at student reasons for their choice of discipline and online messaging as possible explanations for differences. Civil, environmental, and mechanical engineering students at five universities were surveyed regarding their views of social responsibility, which was measured using 50 questions on a 7-point Likert scale and open-ended response questions. Results showed that environmental engineering students had more positive social responsibility attitudes than civil engineering students, whose attitudes were more positive than mechanical engineering students. The greatest differences were among first-year students, suggesting that a priori perceptions of these disciplines differentiated more than curricular content. This hypothesis was supported by differences in the student motivations for choosing each major and online messaging between these disciplines with respect to elements of social responsibility. Lower social responsibility scores among environmental engineering students at higher ranks were troubling and require further study. This contrasted with stable or higher positive social responsibility scores among mechanical engineering students at higher ranks.