Developing an instrument to measure the cognitive- affective-conative profile of engineering students

Learning strategies (cognition), emotion (affection) and conation are suggested as important elements of success for engineering students. Identifying student learning profile may help improve successful rate in engineering program. An instrument that can be used for reliably assessing the cognitive- affective-conative profile of students is needed. This paper report the development and initial testing of the questionnaire (CACQ). Quantitative procedures were used. The set of questionnaire was distributed to 207 final year engineering students after being reviewed by four experts. Each of the constructs reached a good reliability value. Strong and positive correlations were established between learning strategy, emotion, conation and achievement motivation measures. The strength of correlations between the constructs also provides an indicator to the unidimensionality of the constructs. This new questionnaire is a promising measure for assessing the cognitive, affective and conative profile of engineering students.