An exploratory factor analysis of the Pittsburgh Freshman Engineering Attitudes Survey

The Pittsburgh Freshman Engineering Attitudes Survey (PFEAS) has become an important tool in engineering education for measuring students' attitudes about engineering and their confidence in their abilities to achieve in the engineering classroom. Although different versions of the scale have been developed for students at different points in their educational careers, 28 of the items are equable across the various forms of the survey. The authors administered these items to a large sample (N = 372) of engineering majors at a large public university in the southwest. Item and factor analysis of the items revealed problems with the structural validity of the scale, and items and factors were removed based on theoretical and empirical justification. The remaining items produced a structurally valid three factor solution. The authors found these factors were significantly correlated with student study strategies.