Research: Identifying intervention targets to increase mental health help seeking in undergraduate engineers

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National data show that engineering students experiencing mental health distress are significantly less likely than their peers to seek professional mental health help. While treatment gaps exist for cisgender men, persons of color, and first-generation students, these group disparities are further pronounced among engineering students. In this study, we aim to address these concerns about mental health treatment underutilization in engineering through a theoretically grounded, multi-institution study of the beliefs influencing professional help seeking in diverse engineering student populations. This project will build on results from an NSF Research Initiation in Engineering Formation grant which focused on developing a survey instrument to measure the key beliefs that influence mental health related help seeking in undergraduate engineering students. Through this work, the instrument will be improved to ensure representation of the beliefs held by students from diverse backgrounds, studying in different institutional contexts. Once improved, the instrument will be used to identify targets for future interventions to increase mental health related help seeking in students at six different institutions across the United States. This improvement in help seeking will improve the mental health and academic outcomes of diverse engineering students, including those with mental health disabilities.This project will apply a mixed-methods approach to improve and refine the Engineering Mental Health Help-seeking Instrument (EMHHI) based on the Integrated Behavioral Model (IBM) to characterize key mental health help-seeking beliefs in diverse undergraduate engineering students. Through this work, we aim to address three research questions: 1) How can the original EMHHI be improved to enhance validity for diverse students in different institutional contexts? 2) How can the improved EMHHI be refined to maintain cross-cultural validity while maximizing feasibility? 3) How can the refined EMHHI be used to create institutional profiles that identify targets for future mental health interventions in diverse student populations? The original EMHHI was designed to measure beliefs relevant to engineering students with diverse identities at the University of Kentucky, a research-focused predominantly White institution. Therefore, this project will ensure that the instrument is inclusive of help-seeking beliefs of diverse students at other institutions. Through collaborations at Prairie View A&M University (a Historically Black College or University) and University of Houston (a Hispanic-serving Institution), we will use focus groups to identify salient belief items to add to the EMHHI. Next, cognitive interviews will enhance the clarity of the instrument. This improved EMHHI will be refined through large-scale data collection at these three institutions, allowing for removal of items that prove insignificant across select demographic subgroups (e.g., race/ethnicity, gender, generational status). This will improve the validity, clarity and feasibility of the EMHHI. Finally, the refined EMHHI will be used to collect data at three additional institutions (e.g., private, polytechnic, pre-engineering). We will develop a standardized data collection and analysis protocol for identifying key help-seeking beliefs in a diverse array of engineering students and institutional contexts. Development of interventions based on key beliefs identified through this work could increase help-seeking behavior and shift the mental health norms of the engineering community to be more inclusive and supportive of those in mental health distress.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.