During development of our EE units, we asked youths at pilot test sites to reflect on their changing attitudes toward engineering. Across the country, 923 youths completed our Engineering Interest & Attitudes survey. In the survey, we presented kids with several statements and asked them about their level of agreement with the statement both before the unit and after the unit ended. The questions address four different topics:
- the importance of engineering as a discipline and the engineering design process
- their personal desire to learn more about engineering
- their personal enjoyment of and interest in engineering
- the value of engineering to society in general
For every one of EE’s ten units, youths showed statistically significant growth on questions about these four aspects of engineering attitudes. Our upcoming units Plants to Plastics: Engineering Bioplastics and It's About Time: Engineering Timers, are no exception--the graph below presents data from these pilot tests. For both units, youths showed significantly positive changes in attitudes about the importance of engineering and how much they enjoy engineering.
Read the full Engineering Everywhere evaluation report on our research page.