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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
An essential aspect of higher education institutions’ academic curricula for engineering
courses is the students’ industrial internship programs. In the literature, it is well accepted that such
programs provide valuable learning outcomes and increase the graduates’ employment prospects.
Thus, it is paramount to evaluate the internship programs’ quality to identify opportunities to
improve their design and implementation. However, that evaluation typically depends on self-
designed academic assessment surveys of questionable validity. The purpose of this paper is to assess
engineering students’ perceptions of their internship experiences. For that purpose, the validation of
a recently adapted version of the Work Experience Questionnaire (WEQ) was carried out on a sample
of 447 engineering students that participated in industrial internship programs offered by Portuguese
public universities and polytechnic schools. A confirmatory factor analysis was performed to confirm
the suitability of the model proposed by the WEQ’s authors on this study’s sample. The psychometric
qualities were evaluated through convergent and discriminant validity. The results showed that the
model fit the sample well, and convergent and discriminant validity was established. The general
competencies subscale was the most important for the participants—specifically, the competency of
solving problems. Differences concerning the WEQ and gender, company size, and compensation
were found and discussed. This study provides researchers in the field with a new tool validated
explicitly for engineering students.
Description
The authors gratefully acknowledge the research assistance provided by Ana
Teresa Castro in data collection
Keywords
Industrial Internship Engineering Work experience Satisfaction Student perception
Pedagogical Context
Citation
Publisher
MDPI