Males are generally overrepresented in higher education engineering. However, the magnitude of this variance differs between countries and engineering fields. Evidence associated with the field-specific ability beliefs hypothesis suggests that perceptions of intelligence held by actors within engineering affects the engagement of underrepresented groups. This study examined perceptions of an intelligent engineer held by undergraduate and postgraduate engineering students in Ireland and Sweden, countries selected based on their levels of female representation in engineering education. It was hypothesised that there would be a significant difference in perceptions between countries. A survey methodology was employed in which a random sample of Irish and Swedish university students completed two surveys. The first asked respondents to list characteristics of an intelligent engineer, and the second asked for ratings of importance for each unique characteristic. The results indicate that an intelligent engineer was perceived to be described by seven factors; practical problem solving, conscientiousness, drive, discipline knowledge, reasoning, negative attributes, and inquisitiveness when the data was analysed collectively, but only the five factors of practical problem solving, conscientiousness, drive, discipline knowledge and negative attributes were theoretically interpretable when the data from each country was analysed independently. A gender × country interaction effect was observed for each of these five factors. The results suggest that the factors which denote intelligence in engineering between Irish and Swedish males and females are similar, but differences exist in terms of how important these factors are in terms group level definitions. Future work should consider the self-concepts held by underrepresented groups with respect to engineering relative to the factors observed in this study.

男性在高等教育工程中的比例通常过高。但是，这种差异的大小因国家和工程领域而异。与特定领域能力信念假设相关的证据表明，工程领域的参与者对智力的看法会影响代表性不足的群体的参与。这项研究调查了爱尔兰和瑞典的本科和研究生工程学生对智能工程师的看法，这些国家是根据工程教育中女性代表的水平选择的。据推测，各国之间的看法将存在显着差异。采用了一种调查方法，其中爱尔兰和瑞典大学生的随机样本完成了两项调查。第一个要求受访者列出智能工程师的特征，第二个要求对每个独特特征的重要性评级。结果表明，智能工程师被认为是由七个因素描述的；对数据进行综合分析时，实际问题解决能力、尽责性、驱动力、学科知识、推理、负面属性和好奇心，但当数据集中分析时，只有实际问题解决能力、尽责性、驱动力、学科知识和负面属性五个因素在理论上具有可解释性。来自每个国家的独立分析。对于这五个因素中的每一个，都观察到了性别×国家的相互作用效应。结果表明，爱尔兰和瑞典男性和女性在工程学中表示智力的因素是相似的，但在这些因素在群体层面定义方面的重要性方面存在差异。未来的工作应该考虑相对于本研究中观察到的因素，代表性不足的群体在工程学方面的自我概念。