Examining Measurement Invariance of the Planning for Career and Family Scale (PLAN) Across Race/Ethnicity,Gender,and College Year Among Engineering College Students

Abstract

This study examined the measurement invariance (MI) of the Planning for Career and Family Scale (PLAN; Ganginis Del Pino et al., 2013), originally developed to assess career and family planning decisions for women college students, across a diverse sample of engineering students. Using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) with a sample of 1,454 engineering students, the PLAN scale was refined from 24 to 21 items by removing three cross-loading items. Subsequent testing of one-factor, two-factor, and bifactor structural models suggested that the bifactor model fits best to the data, aligning with existing literature, and thus was used as the baseline model for subsequent MI testing. We used two methods to test the MI of the 21-item bifactor PLAN model across gender, race/ethnicity, intersections of gender and race/ethnicity, and academic years. Results of the two methods revealed mixed results on the levels of invariance, with scalar invariance across academic years supported by one method. Latent mean comparisons indicated significant differences in career and family planning intentions between sophomores and seniors. These findings validate the PLAN scale’s applicability across diverse student groups, emphasizing its utility in informing educational policies and programs tailored to support varied career and family planning needs among engineering students.