Measuring the compatibility between engineering students' personality types and major of study: A first step towards preventing engineering education dropouts

Research suggests that almost half of engineering students switch to other majors or drop out mainly due to three key reasons: teaching and advising insufficiency; complexity of engineering curriculum; and a lack of `belonging' within engineering [1]. The current study measures the compatibility between engineering undergraduate students' personality types and their major of study in order to estimate the extent to which engineering students `belong' within engineering. An online questionnaire of Holland's typology of personality was used to obtain scores on students' personality types. Results suggest that the match between students' personality types and Engineering is relatively low. An improvement in this match could help avert engineering dropout.