This study surveyed adult male graduate students who returned to higher education after being unenrolled for two years or more. It was designed to determine the reasons these adult men participated in the courses and/or degree programs of a large public institution, Florida State University. Reasons for participation by adults (women separately or women and men together) have been an important research issue for many years as indicated by the work of Boshier (1971, 1977, 1982, 1989), Anderson and Darkenwald (1979), Morstain and Smart (1974, 1977), and Wolfgang and Dowling (1981). / The primary focus of this research was on adult motivational orientations in higher education. Boshier's copyrighted survey instrument, the Education Participation Scale, was used to identify which of the six motivational factors were identified by a useable sample of 353 adult male students from a select population of 1763 reentry adult male graduate students. Of the six factors, Professional Advancement was chosen as the primary motivator by the sample, followed closely by Cognitive Interest. The remaining four, in declining order, were Community Service, External Expectations, Social Stimulation, and Social Contact. These results confirm earlier research on several different adult student populations. / Although some associations were found between the six motivational factors and the demographic data of the sampled men, the data contributed nothing significant to enhance understanding of the motivation behind the participation. This result supports the conclusion by Cookson (1986) that adult educational motivation is such a complex and multifaceted concept that much work needs to be done on this subject. For example, some of the many theoretical models found need to be verified empirically and grounded in the experience of adult students. Such work can be of great value to institutional and academic administrators if a model can identify likely changes in future enrollment patterns. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 57-03, Section: A, page: 0979. / Major Professor: John S. Waggaman. / Thesis (Ed.D.)--The Florida State University, 1996.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_77682 |
| Contributors | Williams, Victor Marvan, Jr., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 156 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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