Bazinga! You're an engineer...you're___! A Qualitative Study on the Media and Perceptions of Engineers

While a significant amount of television air time is dedicated to dramatizing careers, engineering careers seem somewhat vacant from the prime time line up. Many studies have been conducted to look at the impact of popular television shows on how people view career professionals but little has been done to look at the impact of popular media on people's views of engineers. This pilot study looked at the impact of viewing popular media articles that focus on engineering characters on a person's perception of an engineer. The study focused on using three popular media articles (Dilbert, Mythbusters, and The Big Bang Theory) as representations of engineers. Participants for this study were graduate students at a large research university. Utilizing individual interviews, participants in this study were asked to describe their initial mental picture of an engineer from their own personal experiences. Participants were shown a series of media articles and were asked to describe the mental picture of an engineer they held after watching the media articles. Finally, participants were asked to describe the similarities and differences between their original picture and the picture developed after watching the media articles.