Analysis of social media forums to elicit narratives of graduate engineering student attrition

Background Graduate engineering student attrition is prevalent, but most literature that studies graduate attrition is accomplished in disciplines outside of STEM or engineering, yielding an incomplete understanding of either attrition or persistence. Purpose/Hypothesis The purpose of this article i...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of engineering education (Washington, D.C.) D.C.), 2020-01, Vol.109 (1), p.125-147
Main Authors: Berdanier, Catherine G. P., Whitehair, Carey, Kirn, Adam, Satterfield, Derrick
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
advising
attrition
Coding
Data Analysis
Digital media
Discussion Groups
Engineering
Engineering Education
engineering pathways
Faculty Advisers
Goal Orientation
graduate education
Graduate Students
Graduate studies
mental health
Privacy
Quality of Life
Social Media
Social Networks
Student Attitudes
Student Attrition
Student Costs
Student Motivation
Student retention
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Summary:Background Graduate engineering student attrition is prevalent, but most literature that studies graduate attrition is accomplished in disciplines outside of STEM or engineering, yielding an incomplete understanding of either attrition or persistence. Purpose/Hypothesis The purpose of this article is to investigate the relationships between motivators of attrition for engineering graduate students. Design/Method Data were collected using an online Web‐scraping “bot” that mines data from the online forum Reddit. The anonymous textual forum threads collected were qualitatively analyzed through open‐coding methods. Results The emergent themes reveal the interconnectedness between the roles of the advisor, student perception of cost, their support network, goals, their perceptions of how others perceive them, and quality of life and work. Our model is flexible in that it illuminates underlying combinations of factors that can influence student attrition. Conclusion This study provides a framework by which various stakeholders can approach the support and education of graduate students, including mentoring students both toward or away from graduate school per the student's goals.
ISSN:1069-4730
2168-9830
DOI:10.1002/jee.20299