IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/uteexx/v67y2022i4p306-324.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

First-year undergraduate students’ economic decision outcomes in engineering design

Author

Listed:
  • Tugba Karabiyik
  • Alejandra J. Magana
  • Brittany A. Newell

Abstract

Economic decisions are a crucial part of the engineering design process as designers aim to minimize the cost and maximize the system’s benefits. This study focuses on first-year undergraduate students’ economic decision-making process when they trade off costs and benefits during a design challenge. In addition, we characterized students’ patterns of outcomes derived from economic decisions using the cost-benefit analysis (CBA) method during the design process. Our results suggest that students took different approaches, such as being conservative, moderately conservative, moderate, and aggressive when they tradeoff their design goals. Implications of this study relate to (a) the characterization of different approaches for trading-off design goals and (b) the use of the cost-benefit analysis method as a tool to assess students’ final designs to decide which alternative design is better. In addition, students can use the CBA method to make informed decisions while designing to optimize their design solutions.

Suggested Citation

  • Tugba Karabiyik & Alejandra J. Magana & Brittany A. Newell, 2022. "First-year undergraduate students’ economic decision outcomes in engineering design," The Engineering Economist, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 67(4), pages 306-324, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:uteexx:v:67:y:2022:i:4:p:306-324
    DOI: 10.1080/0013791X.2022.2065395
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/0013791X.2022.2065395
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/0013791X.2022.2065395?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:uteexx:v:67:y:2022:i:4:p:306-324. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/UTEE20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.