Student impressions of academic advisor efficacy: A comparison of two models

The study investigated students\u27 impressions of academic advisor efficacy at a public four-year institution. The focus was on college-level academic advising provided by full-time staff academic advisors compared to academic advising delivered by faculty. The level of student impressions of academic advising, the dependent variable, was analyzed using ten independent variables: students\u27 age, students\u27 grade level classification, students\u27 gender, students\u27 weekly hours employed, students\u27 campus residence location (on or off campus), students\u27 length of time with current advisors, students\u27 ethnicity, students\u27 enrollment status (full or part-time), students\u27 choice of college, and advisor type (full-time faculty or staff). The data were collected from 422 students enrolled in entry-level history classes during the Spring 2002 academic term. Students were asked to anonymously complete ACT\u27s Survey of Academic Advising. Factor analysis was used to identify dimensions of students\u27 impressions of advisors from the set of 36 variables in Section IV of the survey instrument. Factor analysis demonstrated the 36 variables were of similar dimension, (loaded at greater than 0.60 and thus could be considered “high” (Garson, 2002) which allowed for utilization of a total score. A two-way analysis of variance for the total score from the survey items was utilized as the statistical method for testing the hypotheses developed from the nine research questions. The data analysis yielded two significant interactions. The first, interaction between student grade-level classification and advisor type, indicated freshmen had more favorable impressions of staff advisors while upper-class students had more favorable impressions of faculty advisors. The second, between students\u27 length of time with their advisor and advisor type, suggested students who continued with a staff advisor for longer than six moths reported less favorable impressions of their advisors. The study found a significant main effect between students\u27 college-major and impressions of advisors. Students reported less favorable impressions of advising center staff in College “C” compared to the other colleges