Content area
The purpose of this investigation was to examine the effects of selected demographic variables on the attitudes of college freshmen who participated in a Developmental Education Program toward the effectiveness of Developmental Education Programs. More specifically, the researcher of this study was concerned with ascertaining the effects which the students' ethnicity, sex, income level, level of self-concept, ages, and type of institution attended would have on their attitudes regarding the effectiveness of Developmental Education Programs. Additionally, this researcher investigated the relationship between the level of self-concept, ethnicity, and type of institution attended by college freshmen who participated in Developmental Education Programs.
The investigator employed a series of single-factor designs in this study. Four hundred sixty-three freshman students enrolled in Developmental Education Programs were randomly selected to participate in this study.
The Tennessee Self-Concept Scale and a locally devised questionnaire were employed to collect the data. The locally devised questionnaire was validated by a group of authorities in the fields of Developmental Education, Higher Education, and Research and Statistics. The instrument had a split-half reliability coefficient of.71 when the Spearman Brown Formula was applied.
Moreover, the data analysis of this study was accomplished through the application of the One-Way Analysis of Variance. All hypotheses were tested at the.05 level.
Among the conclusions of this study were: (1) The self-concept, especially a positively one, seems to influence how developmental students feel about developmental education programs on predominantly black and white college campuses. (2) Developmental Education Programs seem to be an effective pedagogical mechanism on predominantly black college campuses. (3) The lack of significantly influence on the part of the demographic variables such as sex, age, income level, and ethnicity on the attitudes of developmental students revealed the lack of importance of such variables in determining how developmental students perceived developmental programs. (4) The ethnic groups of which developmental students are members are positively related to how they perceived themselves.