Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011 - rees2009

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) Página 370 de 957
proceeding through psychological, sociological, organizational and vocational literature
(e.g. Barron-Cohen, 1980; Cattel1 & Drevdahl, 1955; Lippa, 1998; Little, 1968; Sarris,
1994). Prediger in his 1982 paper found a person-thing dimension of task performance
preference underlying Holland’s original six factor model of vocational interest. This
person thing dimension has consistently been found to have the largest effect sizes
especially along gender and major lines (Su, Rounds & Armstrong, 2009).
Little (1974) went further and created an instrument to measure this person or thing
focused task performance preference labelling them person and thing orientation. This
instrument was then refined and validated by Graziano et al (2010). Application of this
instrument with students from majors ranging from psychology to life sciences,
engineering, education etc. has demonstrated several things: men are generally higher in
thing orientation than women; women are higher in person orientation than men;
students in highly person focused majors such as education and nursing display high
levels of person orientation; students in science and technology focused majors display
higher levels of thing orientation, engineers consistently display the some of the highest
levels of thing orientation; thing orientation is consistently strongly predictive of
persistence in engineering (Graziano et al, 2008). Though this research demonstrates the
importance of thing orientation among engineers, the nature of thing orientation and the
mechanisms through which it acts are unclear. Therefore this study seeks to investigate
the nature of thing orientation.
Methodology
The central question of this study is “what is thing orientation?” When seeking to
understand a psychological construct there are two major approaches. The Aristotelian
approach assumes that the true nature of a construct can be revealed by finding an
instrument that directly measures it. The Galilean approach, on the other hand, assumes
that behaviour is context dependent resulting from the interaction of several factors. This
approach therefore looks for consistent interactions among variables that explain the
behaviour. It is this second approach that is used in this study. This study uses interactions
between thing orientation and other variables to reveal the nature of thing orientation.
The differential orientation along the person-environment dichotomy in the psychological,
sociological, organizational and vocational literature has overwhelmingly been examined
from a personality trait/dispositional perspective. Therefore, in our investigation, we
compared person and thing orientation to the major personality traits. Spatial and
mechanical aptitude were also measured to investigate whether they might be related to
thing orientation.
Data were collected from approximately 300 engineering students (123 female) in their
fourth, and for many, final year of college at a large Midwestern American university. Data
were collected using an electronic survey sent out to students. This survey contained
validated scales measuring a selection of psychological variables using Likert type items.
These included the Big Five personality traits i.e. conscientiousness or a tendency to
disciplined dutiful action with the goal of achievement, agreeableness or a tendency to be
compassionate and understanding towards others, neuroticism or a tendency towards
Proceedings of Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011
Madrid, 4 th - 7 th October 2011