Engineering is fifth most trusted profession in UK

According to The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), which worked with Ipsos MORI on the poll, 86 per cent of the population trust engineers to tell the truth. This puts engineers just behind nurses, doctors, dentists and teachers in the list of most trusted professions.

The research, which is based on face to face interviews with a sample of 1020 adults across the UK, found that reasons for trusting engineers include being experts on the things that they talk about (49 per cent) and that they turn theory and ideas into things that work in reality (41 per cent).

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Challenging and changing the image of engineering

This year’s survey also asked participants what they think an ‘engineer’ does, giving them a list of options to choose from. A total of 54 per cent described them as someone who builds bridges, roads or railways, with 49 per cent as someone who designs things for the future, whilst 47 per cent described engineers as problem solvers. Encouragingly, the perception of engineers as people who wear dirty overalls and hard hat appears to be on the wane, with just 13 per cent of respondents choosing this description.