Comparing the attitudes towards engineering of honors students and engineering students at a liberal arts university

In Fall 2012, 53 honors students and 53 engineering students (including seven students in both honors and engineering) completed a survey designed to examine their attitudes towards engineering and their ability to succeed in engineering. Preliminary analysis of five factors shows that the attitudes of engineers and honors students were similar in many respects. The main areas of difference were that honors liberal arts students had lower confidence in their ability to succeed in science and math and all non-engineers showed lower aptitude for engineering. Non-engineering women showed slightly less affinity for solving open-ended problems. All students expressed similar attitudes about the creativity of engineers and their contributions to solving society´s problems.