PACE Method

The PACE Method

In conjunction with the substantive goals of the project, the PACE research team also is committed to a set of scientific standards whereby the data are valid, reliable and ethical reflections of students' experiences. In order to meet these methodological goals, the team implemented a mixed-mode research protocol in which an extensive online survey was complemented with in-depth, one-on-one semi-structured interviews.

Sampling Strategy

INSTITUTIONS: To reduce variation by site, the PACE research team restricted the PACE project to those undergraduate engineering programs defined as one-tiered. That is, each of the programs either enrolled its students directly from high school into the College of Engineering and/or provided an engineering advisor during the first year to students who indicated an interest in engineering on their college application form.

INDIVIDUALS: Undergraduate engineering students were invited to participate in PACE based on a stratified random sample rather than a voluntary sample, thereby increasing generalizability to those students at similar institutions not included in PACE. The research team intentionally oversampled women and under-represented minority students as defined by the National Science Foundation (i.e. African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders) to ensure that these groups would be sufficiently represented among those who completed the survey.

Online Climate Survey

The PACE survey, which was designed and pre-tested to accurately measure undergraduate engineering climate (culture), was administered online to students at all 22 PACE institutions. Students from all years of matriculation were eligible to participate and over 10,000 students completed the online survey. The survey covered the following areas:

Interaction with professors
Interaction with Teaching Assistants (TAs, GTAs, GSIs)
Lab experiences (if applicable)
Resources offered by the College of Engineering
Interaction with other students
Involvement with extracurricular activities, organizations and programs
Perceptions of engineering career
Perceptions of engineering major
Personal experiences
Transfer student experiences
Demographics

Climate and Leavers Interviews

We completed 179 interviews with students on-site at 16 PACE institutions. Of those, 124 were with current engineering students and 55 were with students who had either left engineering for another major or were in the process of leaving. All students were eligible for the interviews and we recruited a diverse sample.

The interviews with current students, ("climate interviews") addressed issues included in the Online Climate Survey and provided students the opportunity to describe, in detail, the environment for engineering undergraduates at their institution. In addition, students were asked to describe the areas in which their department excelled and ways in which it could improve. Finally, students were asked specific questions about their perceptions of female and under-represented minority students and faculty in their program.

Former engineering students, "leavers," were asked similar questions but also asked to describe how they came to the decision to switch majors, how this change affected their career plans, peer and family relationships and college experiences more broadly.