The purpose of the study was to compile, measure, and then compare the judgments of four groups--undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and administrators--on the goals of Ball State University. This work investigated the groups' judgments, as to what the University's goals "are" presently (perceived goals) and also what the University's goals "should be" (preferred goals). In order to examine these judgments, three related hypotheses were constructed. These hypotheses were designed to test for the amount. of agreement on goals between these four groups. The method used in proving the hypotheses was a statistical technique, analysis of variance, which computed the differences between squares of means.The null forms of the hypotheses are stated below:Hypothesis I. There will be no significant difference in how undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and administrators perceive the priority given to 20 goals by the University presently. (Is scores)Hypothesis II. There will be no significant difference in how undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and administrators perceive what goals the University ought to emphasize. (Should Be scores)Hypothesis III. There will be no significant difference in how undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and administrators perceive what priority now is given to certain goals and what they think ought to be given. (Should Be-Is Discrepancy)The study's population of 60 undergraduate students, 33 graduate students, 40 faculty, and 14 administrators was randomly selected. The groups responded to the Institutional Goals Inventory (IGI), a questionnaire prepared by the Educational Testing Service.The data were obtained from a sample of 147 questionnaires. The IGI had 90 goal statements. Each of these goal statements was rated on a 5 point scale from 1 to 5, five being of extremely high importance and 1 of no importance or not applicable. Ten goal statements were ungrouped; the remaining 80 were grouped in 20 goal areas comprising 4 goal statements each. Then, means of the responses in each goal area were computed for each of the 4 responding groups, "Is" and "Should Be" means were derived from the entire population, Next, the "Is" means were subtracted from the "Should Be" means, providing discrepancy scores.An F-ratio of 2.68 was used as the point for significant difference between the "Is" means, the "Should Be" means, and for the difference between these two means for each of the 4 responding groups. The F -ratio was computed at the .05 level using these factors; (1) the difference between and within the means of the four groups, (2) sum of squares, (3) a degree of freedom of 3/143, and (4) mean squares. The statistical analysis was done by the computer.Null Hypothesis I, II, and III were supported or rejected separately for each of the study's 20 goal areas. These 20 goals were broken into two categories; Output and Process goals. Output goalswere the substantive objectives, such as intellectual development, vocational preparation, or public service programs. Process goals were the objectives that related for the most part to educational process and campus climate.The research did not provide a clear-cut answer to Hypothesis I. In 11 cases Hypothesis I held true; in 9 cases it did not. In 6 out of 13 output goals the hypothesis proved correct and in 3 out of 7 process goals the same results obtained.There were significant differences among the groups' perception of the importance to the University of the selected goals. The administrators judged all of the 20 goals to be more important to the University than the remaining 3 groups did. The faculty judged 4 out of 20 goals to be more important to the University than did the undergraduate and graduate students. The graduate students judged 3 out of 20 goals to be more important to the University than did the undergraduates. The undergraduate students judged 17 out of the 20 goals to be more important to the University than the faculty. The administrators and the undergraduate students perceived the University as assigning more importance to goal areas than did faculty or graduate students.The research did not provide a clear-cut answer to Hypothesis II. In 11 cases Hypothesis II held true; in 9 cases it did not. In .5-out of 13 output goals the hypothesis proved incorrect and in out of the 7 process goals the same result obtained.There were significant differences among the groups' judgments concerning what importance "Should Be" assigned to selected goals. The graduate students judged 12 out of the 20 "Should Be" goal areas to be more important than the remaining 3 groups. The administrators judged 7 out of the 20 "Should Be" goals areas to be more important than the 2 remaining groups. The undergraduate students judged 1 out of the 20 "Should Be" goal areas to be more important than did the other 3 groups. The faculty judged none of the 20 "Should Be" goal areas to be more important than the other 3 groups.The research most nearly supported Hypothesis III. In 14 cases Hypothesis III held true; in 6 cases it did not. In 3 out of the process goals the hypothesis proved incorrect and in 3 out of the 7 process goals the same result obtained.There were significant discrepancies among the groups' judgments as to the current importance of goals at Ball State University, compared to what they judged "Should Be" their importance. In all 20 goal areas there was always a gap between a lower "Is" score, reflecting perceptions of the present situation, and a higher "Should Be" score, reflecting hopes for another situation. This meant the discrepancy was always a positive one. The graduate students' scores revealed the greatest amount of discrepancy in 14 of 20 goal areas between what they thought the University's goals were and what they wished them to be. The faculty and undergraduate students were basically in agreement about the size of the discrepancy between what they believed the goals to be and what they thought the goals should be, with only 3 out of 20 goal areas higher in discrepancy than the other groups. The administrators had no discrepancy factor higher than any of the other groups. The graduate students saw the University as different from what they wished it to be by a considerable margin, while the administrators perceived the priorities of the University to be much closer to what their own would be.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BSU/oai:cardinalscholar.bsu.edu:handle/178573 |
| Date | January 1974 |
| Creators | Miller, Harold David |
| Contributors | Hoover, Dwight W. |
| Source Sets | Ball State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | ix, 167 leaves ; 28 cm. |
| Source | Virtual Press |
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