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Mukesh Bhargava School of Business Administration, Oakland University Values programs are easier to justify if students actually want to participate in them. We analyzed data from the 2001 Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) survey administered at Oakland University. About a third of the students thought that developing a meaningful philosophy of life was important. These students were somewhat more socially active, focused on individual intellectual pursuits, politically liberal, and spiritual than other students. They thought that individuals can change society. Students interested in philosophy of life don't appear to be more religious than other students. On average, black students were more interested in developing a meaningful philosophy of life than white students. A successful campus program in character and values brings together faculty enthusiasm, administrative support, and a vision of what a good program can be. However, there is another group of stakeholders who are critical to program success: students. It's important to understand what students want from values programs, if they want them at all. Given the option, students will choose programs that match their interests (Köller, Baumert, and Schnabel, 2001). Further, students learn differently when they have a genuine interest in the subject. They are more likely to monitor their learning, and show greater persistence and effort (Covington, 2000). Further, they are more likely to apply what they learn (Lizzio, Wilson, and Simons, 2002). This is particularly important, since the goal of values education is, after all, to have an impact on students' lives. We chose to begin our research with the most basic question of all: how many students want values programs? The main goal of our study was to answer this question. If the answer is "not many," introducing values programs will be difficult in practice. If some students do want values programs, knowing more about the students would help in program design. This was the second goal of our study: to find out what students who want values programs are like. What issues would they want values programs to address? What sort of experiences would they like values programs to offer? We set out to answer these questions for our own university. We used readily available data: the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) freshmen survey. Although it doesn't answer all of our questions in depth, it provides a starting point for a better understanding of what students at our university want. The next sections briefly describe Oakland University (OU) and CIRP. We then present analyses of CIRP data for our campus. Finally, we discuss the limitations of the study, and directions for future research. OU is a public university in suburban Oakland County, north of Detroit, Michigan. The county is one of the wealthiest in the USA, with an economy larger than most states. The university's growth parallels that of the region, from 12,530 students in 1991 to 15,875 in 2001. We have undergraduate, masters, and a few doctoral programs. Current trends are expected to continue, although growth rates are not entirely predictable. Enrollments are expected to reach 20,000 by 2010. New programs are being added, and OU's building construction plan is fairly aggressive, in keeping with expected growth. CIRP is sponsored by the American Council on Education and UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute (HERI). The survey is administered annually to about 350,000 students entering over 700 institutions. It is the oldest survey of its kind (Sax, 2001). The 4-page survey covers demographics, educational experiences, family background, goals, values, political attitudes, religious preferences, behaviors, and many other issues. A sample is available online at HERI's Web site at http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/heri/heri.html CIRP data serves two main purposes. First, institutions use the data for campus administration and planning. For instance, students indicate where they plan to live, helping campus housing estimate demand. Second, researchers use CIRP data to study a wide range of educational issues. Examples include student political views (Litten and Kern, 1993), changes in freshmen attitudes over time (Koch and Nelson, 1999), and changes in how students finance their education (Leslie, 1984). However, we found little analysis of the issues raised in this paper. A. The Sample OU freshmen complete CIRP in the fall semester each year. This study uses data from 2001 from 1,571 students. Of those reporting their gender, 38.8% were males and 61.2% were females (cases with missing data in tested variables are excluded from the calculations given below). Most respondents were traditional age college students, with 95.9% being 18 or 19 years old. Most planned to be full-time students (96.9%). 85.7% reported parent income of at least $30,000, with 58% reporting parent income of at least $60,000. 76.6 % of the respondents reported being white/Caucasian, 13.2% being Black/African American, with all other ethnic categories being 5% or below. The main purpose of this study was to see how many students want values programs. One section of CIRP asks students to rate twenty goals such as raising a family, being very well off financially, and influencing social values. All goal items used a four-point scale (4 = Essential, 3 = Very important, 2 = Somewhat important, and 1 = Not important). For our purposes, the most interesting goal is "Developing a meaningful philosophy of life." The item is ambiguous, an issue we discuss later. However, it is the item most closely related to values. The philosophy of life (PoL) goal was rated as very important or essential by 34.8% of the respondents. When one student in three says an issue is important, it's worth paying attention to. Another way to examine the question is to compare the goal with others. The top ten goals, in order of mean importance to the entire sample, are shown in Table 1 (the ten less important goals are omitted for ease of presentation). The ten high importance goals divide more-or-less cleanly into two groups. Five are concerned with work: financial, being an authority, obtaining recognition, administering others, and owning a business. The other five are about values: family life, PoL, helping others, spirituality, and influencing social values. While the students in this sample care deeply about success in the world of work, it is not their sole obsession. Other aspects of life are important to them as well.
Table 1. Goal Importance (Entire Sample) Only 7 of the 20 goals on the survey were rated as more important than developing a philosophy of life. Further, half of the goals in the top ten relate to some aspect of values. Together, the data suggest that many students do want programs that help them think about life's deepest questions. Our second goal was to see what students who value developing a philosophy of life are like. What experiences do they have? How do they perceive themselves? What are their views on controversial issues? Answers to these questions might help us design programs that would interest them. We examine different sections of the CIRP questionnaire below. We present (1) descriptive statistics on hiPoL students (students who rated developing a philosophy of life as important or critical), and (2) analyses of the relationship between interest in PoL and other variables. Table 2 shows the goals that were important to hiPoL students. The first five goals are the same as those for the entire sample (as shown in Table 1), suggesting that hiPoL students value being well off financially, raising a family, becoming an authority, helping others in difficulty, and obtaining professional recognition. To be relevant to students, PoL programs should be sure to address the relationship between PoL and financial and professional success, along with the importance of PoL in family life.
Table 2. Goal Importance for HiPoL Students We performed a stepwise regression analysis to see whether PoL was associated more with some goals than others. PoL rating (item 8 in Table 1) was the dependent variable, and ratings of the other 19 goals were the predictors. The final regression function was significant (F = 96.2, df = 9, 1458, p@ 0.00, R2= 0.37). Table 3 shows the significant elements of the final regression equation in order of coefficient size.
Table 3. Regression of PoL on Goal Importance Table 3 suggests that social action goals (1, 4, 5, and 6) are more important to hiPoL than to loPoL students (students for whom developing a philosophy of life is not an important goal). HiPoL students are more interested in the social world (goal 7). Goal 2 is about a personal intellectual pursuit. Spirituality (goal 3) is important as well, a finding we will see again. Recognition from peers (goals 8 and 9) is also more important to hiPoL students, although these goals have the smallest coefficients. Students reported their involvement in 28 different activities. The survey used a coarse 3-point scale (Not at all, Occasionally, and Frequently) for the activity items. Since it may not be an interval scale, we recoded the data onto a binary scale before doing any computations, with 0 representing "Not at all" and "Occasionally," and 1 representing "Frequently." The activities with the highest means for hiPoL students are shown in Table 4. There was a large drop in mean activity level after the seventh activity, so we just present the most important seven.
Table 4. Activities for hiPoL Students (Recoded) More than half of the activities (1, 2, 4, and 5) are about computer use. Clearly, this is a technologically savvy group, comfortable with computers and the Internet. Socializing with people from different backgrounds (activity 3) is common for this sample. Again, we performed a stepwise regression analysis, with PoL rating as the dependent variable, and activity ratings as the predictors. The final regression function was significant (F = 11.3, df = 8, 1507, p@ 0.00, R2 = 0.06). Table 5 shows the significant variables, sorted by absolute regression coefficient.
Table 5. Regression of PoL on Activities (Recoded) An interest in PoL was associated social awareness (activities 1, 2, and 4) and with a social activity (activity 5). PoL was negatively related to email use (activity 3), that is, hiPoL students reported using email less than loPoL students. Perhaps socially-oriented hiPoL students would rather meet face-to-face, though this is speculation. CIRP includes another set of 13 items asking students how they spent their time in their high school senior year. Table 6 shows some of the items for hiPoL students. There was a large drop in means between the sixth and seventh items, so only the top six are shown. Several of the behaviors provide opportunities for social interaction. Studying/homework consumed less time than the first three behaviors.
Table 6. Spending Time for HiPoL Students We performed a stepwise regression analysis, with PoL rating (item 8 in Table 1) as the dependent variable, and ratings of the 13 behaviors as the predictors. Table 7 shows the results. The final regression function was significant (F = 11.1, df = 5, 1447, p@ 0.00, R2 = 0.04). As before, PoL was associated with social and intellectual pursuits (behaviors 1, 2, and 3). HiPoL students were less likely to spend time playing video and computer games (behavior 4). However, none of these are in the top half of the most frequent student behaviors, suggesting that while hiPoL and loPoL don't have exactly the same behavioral priorities, they are more similar than different.
Table 7. Regression of PoL on Spending Time The survey included 21 items asking students to rate themselves on various personal attributes, as shown in Table 8. The largest means show hiPoL students think they are driven to achieve, cooperative, understand others well, and have intellectual self-confidence. It's interesting that students rated their cooperativeness second highest, while competitiveness came in thirteenth. Perhaps students would prefer cooperative over competitive projects in a PoL program.
Table 8. Attributes Ratings Stepwise regression analysis of PoL rating (item 8 in Table 1) on attribute ratings was again significant (F = 14.7, df = 9, 1465, p@ 0.00, R2 = 0.08). Table 9 shows the results. PoL is associated with some individual intellectual attributes: creativity, intellectual self-confidence, and self-understanding. Again, PoL is associated with spirituality. PoL is also associated with greater understanding of others. PoL is negatively associated with social self-confidence.
Table 9. Regression of PoL on Attribute Ratings CIRP asks students for their opinions on some controversial issues (see Table 10). What issues are students most passionate about? Since the scale is symmetric, we were able to compute an extremity measure as the distance of each mean from the midpoint of its scale. These values are shown in the "Extremity" column of the table, with the "(+)" indicating agreement and "(-)" indicating disagreement. The most extreme views show support for gun control, support for women's activities outside the home, recognition that racial discrimination is still a problem, support for drug testing by employers, support for equal treatment of gays, and acceptance of the idea that individuals can change society to some extent. The last view is encouraging. Students energized by a PoL program might be willing to act on their beliefs, since they think change is possible.
Table 10. Views for HiPoL Students Stepwise regression analysis of PoL rating (item 8 in Table 1) on attributes was again significant (F = 8.4, df = 7, 1411, p@ 0.00, R2 = 0.04). Table 11 shows the results, sorted by the absolute size of the regression coefficients. Higher PoL scores are associated with greater concern for criminal rights, a stronger desire to abolish the death penalty, more agreement that marijuana should be legalized, desire for more gun control, and greater concern with racial discrimination. Such opinions are more frequently associated with liberal than conservative political opinion. Finally, hiPoL students are more likely to believe that individual actions can change society.
Table 11. Regression of PoL on Views We tested whether PoL was associated with participation in organized religion. The activity "Attended a religious service" was not associated with PoL. "Discussed religion" was (see Table 5), but there does not necessarily imply religion participation. PoL was not associated with self-rating of religiousness (it did not show up in Table 9). CIRP also asks about students' religious preference, coding for 14 different religions, plus choices for "Other Christian," "Other Religion," and "None." We recoded the data so that "None" was 0 (238 subjects), and all others where 1 (1239 subjects). PoL rating did not differ between the groups (t = 0.95, p = 0.34). Students were also asked about their parents' religions. Neither father's religion (t = 0.8, p = 0.43) nor mother's religion (t = 0.37, p = 0.71) affected PoL. CIRP asked if students were born-again Christians. In our sample, 744 answered no, and 247 answered yes. PoL was not significantly different between the two groups (t = 0.57, p = 0.57). However, spiritualityis related to PoL. "Integrating spirituality into my life" is more important for hiPoL than loPoL students (see Table 3). Self-rating of spirituality is also connected to PoL (see Table 9). These results are consistent with Sandfort and Haworth's (2002) study of high school students. Table 12 shows the political identity of the entire sample. The distribution is almost symmetrical around the center, with slightly more on the left than the right. The right-hand column in the table is the mean PoL for students with each political identity. To test whether PoL was related to political identity, we performed a one-way ANOVA of mean PoL rating (item 8 in Table 1) with political view. The test was significant (F = 6.03, p@ 0.00, n =1450). We conducted a post hoc comparison of mean PoL between groups 2 (conservative) and 4 (liberal) [the frequencies for groups 1 (far right) and 5 (far left) were too small for meaningful analysis]. The difference was significant (t = 0.24, df = 1445, p = 0.02), and was of reasonable size at 26.1% of a standard deviation. It appears that the more liberal a student is, the more concerned he or she is with PoL.
Table 12. Political Views of All Students We tested PoL against other CIRP demographic variables. There was no gender difference for PoL (t = 0.30, df = 1511, p = 0.77). There was no age difference (r = -0.02, p = 0.50), but this may not be meaningful given the small range in age in the sample. Parent's income was not significantly correlated with PoL (r = -0.04, p = 0.17). PoL was not related to ACT score (r = 0.01, p = 0.79). There was one interesting demographic difference, however. Mean PoL for black students (2.51 for item 8 in Table 1) was greater than that for white students (2.16). The difference in means was statistically significant (t = 5.05, df = 1365, p@ 0.00), and, at 38.5% of a standard deviation, practically significant as well. The frequencies in other ethnic categories were too small for meaningful analysis. The CIRP data showed that building a meaningful philosophy of life was important to about a third of 2001 Oakland University freshmen. Students interested in this goal were somewhat more socially aware, focused on individual intellectual pursuits, politically liberal, and spiritual than other students. They thought that individuals can change society. Students interested in philosophy of life don't appear to be more religious than other students. Interest did not vary by gender, age, income, or SAT scores. However, on average black students were more interested in developing a meaningful philosophy of life than white students. Is this level of interest enough to justify creating values programs? We think so. Ignoring one student in three is not good policy. Stakeholders like parents and the community might also support the development of values programs. There are two caveats to this recommendation. First, given limited resources, values programs must compete with other worthwhile activities for funding. Each school will need to balance its own needs before committing resources. Second, students see goals like financial security as more important than building a meaningful philosophy of life. They will no doubt sacrifice less important goals to more important ones, if a tradeoff is required. Values initiatives should be placed within the context of other university programs. They have a place, but not necessarily at the expense of other programs. This study has limitations. First, while our focus concentration on Oakland University freshmen suited our purposes, the results might not generalize to students at other universities. Further, they might not apply to older students, since students change over time (Love and Love, 1995). A second limitation is the survey item we focused on: "Developing a meaningful philosophy of life." It is ambiguous. Does it include social issues? Personal relationships? CIRP can't answer these questions, but they are important in the program design. In sum, many students care about values issues. Analysis of their interests, behavior, and other variables suggests the sort of things that values programs might incorporate. Covington, M. V. (2000). Goal Theory, Motivation, and School Achievement: An Integrative Review. Annual Review of Psychology, 51, 171-200. Haworth, J. G., McCruden, K., & Roy L. (2002). On Call: An Institutional Initiative to Explore Students' Understandings of and Responses to Vocation. Journal of College and Character, 2, available at http://www.collegevalues.org/articles.cfm?a=1&id=577 Koch, G. E., & Nelson, K. H. (1999). Assessing Trends in Student Attitudes Using CIRP Data, 1985-1994. Journal of the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition, 11(1), 7-24. Köller, O., Baumert, J., & Schnabel, K. (2001). Does Interest Matter? The Relationship Between Academic Interest and Achievement in Mathematics. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 32(5), 448-470. Leslie, L. (1984). Changing Patterns in Student Financing of Higher Education.Journal of Higher Education, 55(3), 313-46. Litten, L. H., & Kern, K. (1993). Social/Political Liberalism Among Freshmen at Selective Private Institutions: A CIRP Data Sharing Project. AIR 1993 Annual Forum. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 360 936) Lizzio, A., Wilson, K., & Simons, R. (2002). University Students' Perceptions of the Learning Environment and Academic Outcomes: Implications for Theory and Practice. Studies in Higher Education, 27(4), 27-52. Love, P. G., & Love, A. G. (1995). Enhancing Student Learning: Intellectual, Social, and Emotional Integration. ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Reports, no. 4, p 1-117. Sandfort, M. H., & Haworth, J. G. (2002). Whassup? A Glimpse Into the Attitudes and Beliefs of the Millennial Generation. Journal of College and Character, 2, available at http://www.brevard.edu/fyc/listserv/remarks/sax.htm We would like to acknowledge Kay Palmer of Oakland University's Office of Institutional Research for her assistance with this project. |
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