Further Research on an Undergraduate Measure of Professional Development Engagement
Abstract Professional Development Engagement (PDE) refers to the level of undergraduate engagement in professional development. Professional Development (PD) involves activities designed to help students prepare for a successful college-to-work transition. This study tested a new 12-item measure of PDE for a complete-data sample of 246 undergraduate business students aggregated across the fall of 2013 and spring of 2014. The "did not use" response to an activity for each of the ten Career/Professional Development Center (CPDC) items in the PDE measure resulted in a surprisingly high aggregated loss of respondents (61%). Further investigation showed that students who never joined a student professional organization (SPO) had a higher "did not use" response percentage across these ten items versus students who had joined an SPO. Overall, the results support a reliable 12-item PDE scale. (130 words) Keywords: professional development; student engagement; undergraduates ********** Of those full-time students beginning college in the United States (US), on average less than five in 10 will make it out in five years (Morrow & Ackermann, 2012). One important component driving graduation success is student engagement (SE), i.e., the effort and energy students devote to educationally purposeful activities such as learning, graduating, and acquiring knowledge to succeed in one's envisioned career (Carini, Kuh & Klein, 2006). The increased job placement challenges faced by today's U.S. college graduate (Abel, Deitz & Su, 2014) suggest that colleges and universities need to also increase their externally-focused SE efforts to help students find appropriate jobs, e.g., related to one's major, good pay, and career potential (Arcidiacono, 2004; Stone, Zukin & Van Horn, 2012). Blau and Snell (2013) argue that much of this needed external focus for SE can be captured by looking at undergraduate Professional Development Engagement (PDE), defined (p. 690) as "the level of undergraduate engagement in professional development." Blau and Snell (2013) have presented a model for understanding PDE which has five broad antecedent variable sets of PDE: (1) Student Background; (2) Pre-College Credentials; (3) College-Related; (4) Organization-Related; and (5) Motivation-Related. In addition, their model predicts that PDE will be positively related to two outcomes, timely graduation and appropriate job placement. Empirical research has begun to test this model (Blau, Snell, Campbell, Viswanathan, Aarsonson, & Kamik, in press-a). However, the centerpiece of the model (Blau & Snell, 2013, p.693) is that a valid and reliable scale of PDE can be developed. Initial studies have supported the validity and reliability of a 12-item PDE scale (Blau, Snell, Cambpell, Vishwanathan, Aaronson, Kamik 2014a; Blau, Snell, Campbell, Vishwanathan, Andersson, Lopez, 2014b). The purpose of this study is to further test this 12-item PDE scale using a new, distinct sample of business undergraduates. Method Sample and Procedure The sample of undergraduate business students came from Temple University, which has its main campus located in Philadelphia. Temple University is a large public university in Pennsylvania, with a 2013 total student enrollment of over 37,000, including approximately 5,000 undergraduate business students. Senior business students were very strongly encouraged (e.g., by their advisor, through email blasts) to complete a voluntary on-line Senior Student Satisfaction Survey (SSSS) prior to graduation. Study measures were part of the SSSS. Data were collected in the fall, 2013 (n = 255) and spring, 2014 (n = 369) semesters and aggregated (N = 624). The university institutional review board (IRB) approved the research. Measures Student Background Variables. Six variables were measured as one-item/variable: status entering university, joining a student professional development organization (SPO), gender, self-report cumulative grade point average (GPA), semesters living on or near Main Campus, and year entering college. …