Person Orientation and Encouragement: Predicting Interest in Engineering Research

Background: Encouraging student involvement in undergraduate research may be a way institutions can foster pursuit of research as a career. This article examines how engineering students' interests combine with perceived faculty encouragement to influence their plans for involvement in undergraduate and professional research. Purpose/Hypothesis: Individuals orient differently to people and things in their environments. We examine how thing and person orientations affect undergraduates' interest in engineering research. We hypothesize that thing orientation will be directly related to interest in an engineering research career, but that person orientation will have an indirect effect through student perceptions of faculty encouragement and student intentions to participate in undergraduate research. Design/Method: Engineering undergraduates from a research-intensive university provided data about their interests in things and people, perceptions of faculty encouragement to participate in research, and intentions to pursue undergraduate research and research careers. Results: Thing orientation directly predicts research career intentions in engineering. Person orientation has an indirect effect on career interests through greater perceptions of faculty encouragement to participate in undergraduate research. Perceptions of encouragement translate into greater intentions to participate in undergraduate research and then greater interest in pursuing a research career. Conclusions: Both thing and person orientations influence the plans and intentions of engineering students. Perceived faculty encouragement and participation in undergraduate research are important predictors of students' interest in pursuing a research career.