The primary purpose of this study was to determine if a relationship existed between self-esteem and academic achievement among students at the freshman level in the College of Agriculture at a Research-Extensive University in the Southern Region of the United States.
The sample of the study was all students at one selected Research-Extensive University enrolled in the Introduction to Agriculture course which was a requirement for agriculture students at the freshman level. Three instruments were used for data collection. The Adult Form of the Coopersmith Inventory was administered at two data collection points at the beginning and end of the first semester of college enrollment. A researcher-designed questionnaire was used to collect demographic information. A third instrument was a recording form on which data from the Office of the University Registrar were downloaded and stored.
No significant relationship was found between self-esteem at the beginning of the first semester of college and the first semester grade point average of students at the freshman level. Using multiple regression analysis, a significant model was identified which explained 9.9% of the variance in academic achievement. The variable that had the greatest impact on academic achievement was membership in a departmental student organization. The variables whether or not the father completed a graduate degree, membership in service organizations, and partici-pation in sports also entered the model. Multiple regression analysis was also used to identify a significant model that explained 17.3% of the variance in self-esteem at the end of the first semester of college enrollment. The variable with the greatest impact on self-esteem was age. Other variables which contributed significantly were membership in social sororities/fraternities, membership in religious organizations, Hispanic Race, African American Race, and Caucasian Race.
The researcher concluded that there was no relationship between academic achievement and self-esteem. The researcher recommended the development of an instrument to measure self-attitudes regarding constructs specific to the college student. This instrument would serve the function of measuring self-esteem for this intermittent stage in the lives of many young people.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-01152010-145510 |
| Date | 27 January 2010 |
| Creators | Gaspard, Mae Blanchard |
| Contributors | Burnett, Michael F., Johnson, Geraldine H., Verma,Satish, Johnson, Earl C., Crick, Nathan |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-01152010-145510/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
Page generated in 0.0016 seconds