Changes within: How within-person changes on key social cognitive career theory constructs relate to first-year engineering student persistence intentions

The engineering field is experiencing a disparity between the growing demand for engineers and the supply of new entrants into the labor market. Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) has long been used to model student persistence in engineering. However, almost all prior studies use differences between students and not changes within students over time to predict persistence. To address this gap, we measured salient Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) constructs, namely self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and interest in engineering, at four time points to explore the relationship between persistence intentions and changes in those constructs within individual students. Participants were enrolled in introductory engineering courses during their first semester of their engineering program of study. Using hierarchical linear modeling, engineering persistence intentions over their first semester were predicted from between-student differences in self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and interest and importantly within-person differences over time in the same suite of predictors. We found that within-student self-efficacy and within-person outcome expectations were statistically significant predictors of persistence intentions, with the strength of these relationships changing over time.