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Social Support Factors Affecting Engineering Technology Student Intent to Persist

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2018, Doctor of Education, University of Akron, Educational Leadership.
This quantitative study tested factors related to the persistence intentions of engineering technology students at a large, Midwestern, urban institution in 2018 .This work sought to determine if three forms of social support promoted intent to persist either directly or indirectly through the mediating variable sense of belonging. The three specific social supports considered were family support, faculty support and off-campus community support. The data collected for this study did not support the anticipated high rates of attrition for engineering technology student participants that has been reported for students in STEM fields. The student participant intent to persist rate was 88%, measured campus persistence data supported the student responses at 87% of students persisting to the next semester. The student participants in this study included transfer students from engineering degree programs, transfer students who had earned associate degrees as well traditional engineering technology majors. Those students who transferred into an engineering technology program may have previously made persistence decisions and are therefore are less affected by social support factors. The Pearson product-moment coefficient and one-way ANOVA analysis were used to assess the research questions. The findings of the study were that the three social support factors had a statistically significant impact on the sense of belonging of students. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to identify statistically significant differences between groups when considering gender, age group, major and student origin. A saturated analytic model was developed to test the social support factors effect on sense of belonging and intent to persist. The path results were not statistically significant for intent to persist due to the minimal number of students not intending to persist limiting the analysis. The direct effect of the social support factors and the indirect effect through sense of belonging could not be established with the present data. The path analysis verified the relationship that predicted sense of belonging from faculty support, family support. The analytic model was trimmed to provide a sense of belonging model that provided good fit to the data.
Wondimu Ahmed (Committee Chair)
Susan Kushner Benson (Committee Member)
Edward Evans (Committee Member)
Gary Holliday (Committee Member)
Nidaa Makki (Committee Member)
166 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Milks, A. E. (2018). Social Support Factors Affecting Engineering Technology Student Intent to Persist [Doctoral dissertation, University of Akron]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1542408042160873

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Milks, Andrew. Social Support Factors Affecting Engineering Technology Student Intent to Persist. 2018. University of Akron, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1542408042160873.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Milks, Andrew. "Social Support Factors Affecting Engineering Technology Student Intent to Persist." Doctoral dissertation, University of Akron, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1542408042160873

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)