Professional competencies in engineering: examining validity and measurement invariance of a scale

This study aimed to validate the factor structure of professional competencies in engineering and test the measurement invariance of these competencies across gender. Through a cross-sectional survey, 552 senior undergraduate students (287 males) responded to a 24-item professional competencies scale. The professional competencies included five dimensions, namely knowledge and reasoning of technical and engineering; personal skills and attitudes; professional and ethical skills and attitudes; interpersonal skills and attitudes; and skills of developing system, product, or process. Con?rmatory factor analysis yielded that five-factor structure of professional competencies ?tted to the data more suitably than the one-factor structure. Results supported the reliability and validity of all the subscales assessing professional competencies. Tests for measurement invariance of the ?ve factors provided support for con?gural, metric, and scalar invariance across gender. Overall, the obtained factor structure provided evidence in support of the comparability of the model between male and female students.