Variables related to freshman attrition

Includes bibliographical references (pages 135-141)The present study investigated the relationship between freshman college persistence and 136 self-report variables and 8 objective academic indices. Five hundred and ninety three freshmen (225 males, 368 females) at California State University, Northridge were administered the Student Survey Questionnaire (SSQ), an instrument designed by the authors to collect self-report data for use in the present research. The SSQ gathered data on a wide spectrum of factors including biographic and demographic variables, self-concept ratings, perceptions of the college environment, past academic history, motivation for attending and completing college, social support systems, family background and perceptions of parental attitudes. Data on objective academic variables (e.g. high school GPA and SAT scores) were collected directly from university files. These data were gathered early in the Fall, 1975 semester. Follow-up data on the persistence or non-persistence of students were gathered in the Spring, 1976 semester, allowing one semester for attrition.\ud Forty-eight students (15 males 33 females) did not persist in their studies at the university. Comparisons of the persister and non--persister groups indicated a number of significant relationships between the 144 variables in this investigation and freshman attrition. Among these results, it was shown that male non-persisters came from relatively low socioeconomic status families and demonstrated somewhat lower high school performance than their persisting peers. The male non-persister begins college more uncertain of his occupational and vocational goals and feels his parents have no strong expectations for him to attend college. The non-continuing male does not perceive his relationship to his family as supportive, he feels alienated and predicts problems in coping with the academic demands of college. However, he often predicts that he will not finish his college education at C.S.U.N. and expresses little emotional upset at the prospect of academic dismissal.\ud The female non-persister is most often married, feels that college and grades are of little importance and predicts having difficultly coping with the academic and social demands of college. She did not do as well in high school as her persisting peers and expects to achieve a lower academic degree. The female non-continuing student perceives the college in somewhat negative terms, feels unsure of her academic and vocational goals and exhibits a generally\ud lower self-concept than her persisting counterpart.\ud Multiple regression results for selected variables indicated that 17.85% of the variance in attrition was accounted for in the entire sample whereas 29.16% and 24.43% of the variance was accounted for in analyses for males and females respectively