This study determined the recidivism rates associated with six educational sanctions assigned after undergraduate students were found responsible for a violation of a residence hall alcohol policy at a large urban research institution. The educational sanctions selected for the study included: Personal Education, Assistance, and Referral program or PEAR (a series of four group sessions including components of alcohol education and motivational intervention); PEAR II (a series of follow-up motivational interviews for repeat violators); Community Service; Reflection Paper; MyStudentBody.com (an online alcohol education course); and Counseling Center Referral.
The study also assessed student perceptions of their assigned sanction(s) with respect to the degree of new information learned and impact on future behavior related to alcohol. An educational approach to judicial affairs in higher education, set forth by the Association for Student Judicial Affairs, provided the framework for the study. From a research sample of 483 student alcohol policy violators, an analysis of student judicial data was performed to determine the overall recidivism rate and individual sanction rates for the 2006-2007 academic year. Students with policy violations during the spring 2007 semester were invited to participate in the researcher-designed Educational Sanction Survey to measure perceptions of new information learned and predicted impact on future behavior. A response rate of 58% (n=112) was achieved for the survey.
Analysis of recidivism data revealed an overall repeat violation rate of 5.5% over the course of the 2006-2007 academic year, with the Counseling Referral sanction displaying the highest repeat violation rate at 16.7% and PEAR II displaying the lowest at 0%. Chi Square analyses showed that students assigned to complete PEAR and the Counseling Referral reported the highest degrees of new information learned, while the Reflection Paper students indicated the greatest perceived impact on their future behavior.
The results supported the continued use of PEAR, the Reflection Paper, and Community Service for first-time violators, and suggested that additional research should be conducted to determine the effectiveness of MyStudentBody.com. The results of this study indicate that the majority of sanctions studied at this institution have an educational impact on the students assigned to complete them.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-04212008-223435 |
| Date | 27 June 2008 |
| Creators | Asher, Karin |
| Contributors | Shawn Brooks, Thomas Zullo, Glenn Nelson, Charlene Trovato |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-04212008-223435/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto 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 University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, 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. |
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