Soft skills for engineering students and graduates

The purpose of this study was to investigate the compliance of electrical engineering ethics codes among students of electrical faculty of Tabriz University and its related factors. In this descriptive-analytic cross-sectional study, 120 students of electrical engineering with a history of activity were selected purposefully. Data were collected by a researcher-made questionnaire. The content validity index was calculated based on the Bausell& Waltz scale for the total tool of 83.21 and the Cronbach's alpha was 0.76. The questionnaire contains 40 items in three dimensions: individual, technical and professional, and social. Data were analyzed by SPSS software version 20 and comprehensive descriptive information of participants was used for inferential information using T, Friedman, analysis of variance and Tukey's post hoc test. The findings of the research show that the rate of students' compliance with the ethical codes of engineering in all three areas was higher than the average of society and the rankings of these subscales were respectively social ethics, individual morality and technical ethics. Gender variables, job experience and level of familiarity with ethical codes did not show significant differences with respect to ethics codes of electrical engineering. But the level of education varied significantly with ethical codes. By adopting approaches such as designing and codifying the ethical code of electrical engineering and incorporating it into the professional ethics of engineering, teachig and internalization of these ethical codes, the degree of observance of these codes among the students of electrical engineering can be increased.