Quantitative Investigation of Engineering Graduate Student Conceptions and Processes of Academic Writing

Though many writing researchers link the role of writing with disciplinary socialization, there is little research outside of anecdotal evidence on how engineering graduate students in particular conceptualize and relate to the writing process. These affective components of writing are as necessary as the cognitive activities in terms of developing successful graduate engineering writers. To meet this gap, the present study shows survey data from N=210 graduate engineering students at research intensive universities across the United States. The survey comprised three validated writing scales investigating students’ conceptions of writing, processes of writing, writing self-efficacy in a single survey deployment. Descriptive statistics show the common processes and conceptions with writing, but Pearson correlations calculated across scales reveal statistically significant relationships among the scale factors, for example that many graduate engineering writers often struggle with a “trifecta” of low writing self-efficacy, perfectionism, and procrastination. This study extends prior mixed methods and smaller scale quantitative work that has been done in the past with engineering graduate students, and also points to the importance of addressing the layered nature of student issues with writing. Findings are situated in terms of practical recommendations for technical writing researchers and faculty as they help graduate students navigate academic engineering writing.