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This study provides insight into 1 st-year undergraduate persistence by using behavioral measures, based on Astin's theory of involvement, to further our understanding of Tinto's theory of student departure. The findings from this study support using an integrated model in which student behaviors and perceptions interact to influence the development of academic and social integration.
Pascarella and Terenzini (1991) noted that Tinto's interactionalist model of individual student departure is "quite similar to Astin's (Theory of Involvement) in its dynamics" (p. 51). It is rather surprising that even though Tinto's interactionalist model of student departure (1975, 1993) and Astin's theory of involvement (1984) both deal with the issue of persistence in college and are among the most widely cited approaches in the higher education literature, the relationship between the two rarely has been studied empirically. We used longitudinal data to empirically test a conceptual model of student persistence that integrates behavioral constructs from Astin's work to further specify aspects of Tinto's model.
CONCEPTUAL OVERVIEW
"Quite simply, student involvement refers to the amount of physical and psychological energy that the student devotes to the academic experience" (Astin,1984, p. 297). Astin was clearly describing involvement as behavioral in meaning. "It is not so much what the individual thinks or feels, but what the individual does, how he or she behaves, that defines and identifies involvement" (p. 298). This theory of involvement is rooted in a longitudinal study of college student persistence from which Astin (1975) concluded that factors contributing to persistence were associated with students' involvement in college life, whereas, factors contributing to departure from college were associated with students' noninvolvement.
Astin (1984) suggested five basic postulates in his theory: (al involvement means the investment of physical and psychological energy in different "objects" that range in the degree of their specificity; (b) involvement occurs along a continuum, with different students investing different amounts of energy in various objects at various times; (c) involvement includes quantitative and qualitative components; (d) the amount of student learning and personal development is directly proportional to the quality and quantity of involvement; and (e) "the effectiveness of any educational practice is directly related to the capacity of that policy or practice to increase involvement" (p. 298). Astin maintained that the final two...