Engineering Students’ Industrial Internship Experience Perception and Satisfaction: Work Experience Scale Validation

An essential aspect of higher education institutions’ academic curricula for engineering courses is the students’ industrial internship programs. In the literature, it is well accepted that such programs provide valuable learning outcomes and increase the graduates’ employment prospects. Thus, it is...

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Autores principales:	Teresa Nogueira, José Magano, Eunice Fontão, Marina Sousa, Ângela Leite
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	MDPI AG 2021
Materias:	industrial internship engineering work experience satisfaction student perception Education L
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/faad06a08c21470a90e8d33f95449fe4
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:faad06a08c21470a90e8d33f95449fe42021-11-25T17:23:13ZEngineering Students’ Industrial Internship Experience Perception and Satisfaction: Work Experience Scale Validation10.3390/educsci111106712227-7102https://doaj.org/article/faad06a08c21470a90e8d33f95449fe42021-10-01T00:00:00Zhttps://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/11/11/671https://doaj.org/toc/2227-7102An essential aspect of higher education institutions’ academic curricula for engineering courses is the students’ industrial internship programs. In the literature, it is well accepted that such programs provide valuable learning outcomes and increase the graduates’ employment prospects. Thus, it is paramount to evaluate the internship programs’ quality to identify opportunities to improve their design and implementation. However, that evaluation typically depends on self-designed academic assessment surveys of questionable validity. The purpose of this paper is to assess engineering students’ perceptions of their internship experiences. For that purpose, the validation of a recently adapted version of the Work Experience Questionnaire (WEQ) was carried out on a sample of 447 engineering students that participated in industrial internship programs offered by Portuguese public universities and polytechnic schools. A confirmatory factor analysis was performed to confirm the suitability of the model proposed by the WEQ’s authors on this study’s sample. The psychometric qualities were evaluated through convergent and discriminant validity. The results showed that the model fit the sample well, and convergent and discriminant validity was established. The general competencies subscale was the most important for the participants—specifically, the competency of solving problems. Differences concerning the WEQ and gender, company size, and compensation were found and discussed. This study provides researchers in the field with a new tool validated explicitly for engineering students.Teresa NogueiraJosé MaganoEunice FontãoMarina SousaÂngela LeiteMDPI AGarticleindustrialinternshipengineeringwork experiencesatisfactionstudent perceptionEducationLENEducation Sciences, Vol 11, Iss 671, p 671 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	industrial internship engineering work experience satisfaction student perception Education L
spellingShingle	industrial internship engineering work experience satisfaction student perception Education L Teresa Nogueira José Magano Eunice Fontão Marina Sousa Ângela Leite Engineering Students’ Industrial Internship Experience Perception and Satisfaction: Work Experience Scale Validation
description	An essential aspect of higher education institutions’ academic curricula for engineering courses is the students’ industrial internship programs. In the literature, it is well accepted that such programs provide valuable learning outcomes and increase the graduates’ employment prospects. Thus, it is paramount to evaluate the internship programs’ quality to identify opportunities to improve their design and implementation. However, that evaluation typically depends on self-designed academic assessment surveys of questionable validity. The purpose of this paper is to assess engineering students’ perceptions of their internship experiences. For that purpose, the validation of a recently adapted version of the Work Experience Questionnaire (WEQ) was carried out on a sample of 447 engineering students that participated in industrial internship programs offered by Portuguese public universities and polytechnic schools. A confirmatory factor analysis was performed to confirm the suitability of the model proposed by the WEQ’s authors on this study’s sample. The psychometric qualities were evaluated through convergent and discriminant validity. The results showed that the model fit the sample well, and convergent and discriminant validity was established. The general competencies subscale was the most important for the participants—specifically, the competency of solving problems. Differences concerning the WEQ and gender, company size, and compensation were found and discussed. This study provides researchers in the field with a new tool validated explicitly for engineering students.
format	article
author	Teresa Nogueira José Magano Eunice Fontão Marina Sousa Ângela Leite
author_facet	Teresa Nogueira José Magano Eunice Fontão Marina Sousa Ângela Leite
author_sort	Teresa Nogueira
title	Engineering Students’ Industrial Internship Experience Perception and Satisfaction: Work Experience Scale Validation
title_short	Engineering Students’ Industrial Internship Experience Perception and Satisfaction: Work Experience Scale Validation
title_full	Engineering Students’ Industrial Internship Experience Perception and Satisfaction: Work Experience Scale Validation
title_fullStr	Engineering Students’ Industrial Internship Experience Perception and Satisfaction: Work Experience Scale Validation
title_full_unstemmed	Engineering Students’ Industrial Internship Experience Perception and Satisfaction: Work Experience Scale Validation
title_sort	engineering students’ industrial internship experience perception and satisfaction: work experience scale validation
publisher	MDPI AG
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/faad06a08c21470a90e8d33f95449fe4
work_keys_str_mv	AT teresanogueira engineeringstudentsindustrialinternshipexperienceperceptionandsatisfactionworkexperiencescalevalidation AT josemagano engineeringstudentsindustrialinternshipexperienceperceptionandsatisfactionworkexperiencescalevalidation AT eunicefontao engineeringstudentsindustrialinternshipexperienceperceptionandsatisfactionworkexperiencescalevalidation AT marinasousa engineeringstudentsindustrialinternshipexperienceperceptionandsatisfactionworkexperiencescalevalidation AT angelaleite engineeringstudentsindustrialinternshipexperienceperceptionandsatisfactionworkexperiencescalevalidation
_version_	1718412446283071488

Engineering Students’ Industrial Internship Experience Perception and Satisfaction: Work Experience Scale Validation

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