Course talk:POLI380JAN2011Owen/Survey/Post-secondary education

Hi everyone,

This is what I was thinking for the research question (see below). It is quite broad, but this seems necessary as there are likely many variables that could effect someone's education choices.

Research Question: Which factors determine the faculty in which a new post-secondary student attends? - David McHugh Hypothesis: Increases in a family's income is positively correlated with increased likelihood to attend the faculty of commerce. Hypothesis: Higher numbers of volunteer hours worked per individual is positively correlated with likelihood to attend the faculty of arts.

What do you guys think of these?

Hi David I like your research question, I think it's interesting and lends itself to a lot of data. I think the hypotheses need a bit of work though, just because I feel they're a little narrow/easy to disprove. I'm mainly referring to the second one, as volunteer hours have become something that a lot of students need for various applications (such as the sauder administration), bursaries/grants, and so on. Also, I think most younger students volunteer involvement has to do with the encouragement or instigating of their parents, so maybe there is a correlation between people who have an arts degree (already gradated) and their amount of volunteer hours?

A research question I was thinking of was Research Question: Is there a relation between where students of BC live and if/where they attend post secondary institutions? Hypothesis: AP courses are often offered at schools within the Greater Vancouver Area, therefore encouraging students early to attend post-secondary education Hypothesis: The distance from rural/northern BC and most post secondary institutions causes students to feel that it is distant/out of reach Hypothesis: Students who's parents attended post secondary education are more likely to attend themselves.

Hi Brittany,

I think your research question would be difficult to measure for as well, because we would only be able to survey students already at UBC. To determine the relationship between where one lives and the institution they attend, we would have to collect data from all post-secondary institutions.

Is there a solution for this? Is there a way to control for the fact that we would only be able to survey students in Vancouver?

Hi David I think there has been some confusion. My question does not specify/concern specifically what school a student attends. It would be important to know if they were going to a university vs a trade school - if they're planning on pursing post secondary at all, but not which specific trade school or university. I was actually thinking that the measurement would be done on grade 12 students, who are about to graduate, and know where/if they're attending post secondary school. This is also a more controlled group as we know who/where they are. I also don't think we would have to be restricted to Vancouver. We could survey UBC students, but like you said that would be pretty difficult as we would have to find the students that are from BC, which is a huge task in itself. Does that make more sense? Thoughts?

Hello David and Brittany. Thank you for starting-off the discussion with such interesting ideas.

I agree with Brittany in saying that David's Research Question on Which factors determine the faculty in which a new post-secondary student attends? is an interesting one. It provides us with a clear subject pool for the survey - Year 12/Graduating students.

However, I hope you don't mind me saying David, that I have reservations about Hypotheses 1 - "Increases in a family's income is positively correlated with increased likelihood to attend the faculty of commerce" - being a little too narrow. "High Family Income" may not be a valid variable for the phenomena we're trying to measure. Some high-income families headed by parents in the corporate field or who run a business would be likely to encourage their children to attend the Faculty of Commerce But this disregards families headed by parents who are of equally high-paying but different professions such as fields in medicine, academia, law... the child of a high-income lawyer would likely be encouraged to enter the Faculty of Political Science as a prerequisite for law school OR since law schools do not specify which Bachelor Degree they prefer, the child is exposed to a larger range of options.

Perhaps it would be easier to generalize that "Children of Parents with Professional Degrees (in the traditional sense of the word "professional" meaning the professor, lawyer, doctor...)are More Likely to Enter into a Faculty that Allows them to Specialize in a Certain Profession" I'm not sure about the wording, perhaps you could give me some suggestions? If we follow from that Hypotheses we could perhaps ask: "1) To What Extend Do Your Parents Influence Decisions Regarding Your Academic Career?" and have a 5-scale number range to determine the Degree of Influence. We could then add a lead-on question that explores other factors in Parental Influence: "1a) Do Your Parents Entirely Fund/Partly Fund Your Education?" OR "1b)Do Your Parents Insist Upon a Chosen Career Path for You?"

To help us narrow down the scope of our Research Question, perhaps we could list out some potential Independent Variables that may influence our Dependent Variable/Faculty Choice and then deliberate about which variables are easier to valid, reliable and easy to measure:

- Parent's Career/Profession

- Parent's Level of Education/Degree of Knowledge about Post-Secondary Institutions

- Child's Highest Scoring Year12/AP Subject(likely the one they want to major in)

- Availability/Access to Guidance Councilor (more information means child is better informed about they're career paths/academic choices)

- Student's GPA upon Application (some Faculties require a higher average/specific prerequisites)

Just some thoughts, I look forward to hearing all your feedback!

Thank you,

Joei

Hi everyone This is just a side note. A TA is in our lab right now outlining the objectives/marking schemes for this project. We need to come up with 5 questions and post them on the main page. I think we should come up with 5 factors we think are important or that we're interested in about post secondary education (what students take, who pursues it, etc.) and then make questions from there. David, it seems like you're interested in what students take/what influences what they study at post secondary education so that could be one factor. I think who attends post secondary education (as far as BC students) is interesting Joey, two of your points were about parents and their influence on their children/potential post secondary students, so that could be another question

Anyways that what I think we should do. We would need two more areas/factors and then develop questions from there. Thoughts?

Hey Brittany,

I agree with you. Our 5 questions should be organized so we hit all of the key point we've discussed so far. Another question can be built around financial influences which we have discussed above. Feel free to add or drop these ideas I've listed below.

5 factors 1. David - Student Influences 2. Joey - Parent's influence on children attending post-secondary 3. Harpreet - Financial influences 4. ? 5. ?

Hello Everyone, I think Joei nicely summarized the focus of one of our topic questions. Thank you, David for bringing thought-provoking subject into the group. And, thank you Brittany for guiding the group away from constructing narrow assumptions. When trying to establish whether a Family Income (X) causes a particular Choice of Study/Faculty (Y), we need to “control for” the effect of other causes of Y including (a) surrounding influences such as parent’s level of education, education like Joei stated but also (b) personal determination in other words, one’s independent interest. Understanding selection of faculty seems very interesting topic yet it involves multivariate that we could easily make a false inference. If we fail to control for the effects of Z, we are quite likely to misunderstand the relationship between Family Income and Choice of Study/Faculty because several uncontrolled-for Z (as we have identified) could be related to both X and Y, we are unable to conclude with complete sureness that Family Income indeed causes Choice of Study/Faculty and make the wrong inference.

Hi JinYoung. Thank you for your analysis. Perhaps we could narrow the scope of our Hypotheses to "If there is a High degree of Financial Dependence/University Funding by Parents there is a High Liklihood Student will conform to Parents' Expectations with regard to Degree/Faculty Choice Financial Dependence being the X Variable that influences Subject Choice the Y Variable

We can test this by asking 2 questions:

1) Do your Parents Fund your Post-Secondary Education?

If answer is 'YES' How much?

a)Entirely

b)Only School Semester Fees (credit course fees, exam fees)

c)Only Course Materials (books, course packs, stationary)

If answer is 'NO' please proceed to question 2

2)To what extent has your Faculty and Degree Choice Decision been Influenced by your Parents?

Where 1 is a decision made with complete disregard of their opinions and 10 is a decision made with entire conformity with their expectations:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Everyone, please let me know if you have any other suggestions or thoughts

Hello again, if our group wants to focus on the impact of socio-economic status (mainly household income) of students attending post-secondary, we needs to look at (a) impact of parental socio-economic status on post-secondary accessibility, and (b) accessibility of student loans, use of student loans and student indebtedness for those who have initiated post-secondary studies. I think your questions provide pretty strong starting point for this survey. I thought of also asking question such as this:

Q: Who saved for your post-secondary education? A. Yourself B. Parents C. Other Family Members including grandparents and relatives D. Other/Please Specify

Q: If no savings by anyone including parents, why did your parents/guardians not save for your post-secondary education? A. Low Family Income B. Expected me to pay C. Expected to pay from their income D. Other/Please Specify

Guys, please let me know your thoughts on this. If anyone has an idea, please feel free to throw an alternative questions or further suggestions.

Hi Jin Young thanks for your contribution. Although, I just wanted to clarify that we may be going in 2 Different (but equally valid) directions. I apologize if I was unclear! but Question 1 and 2 posed in my last post aimed at answering the question of Parental Influence (Independent) on Faculty/Degree Choice (Dependent) - If we're in agreement about the wording of the questions, I'll post them on the Front Page.

From Question1 I gather that we are trying to understand How post-secondary education is being funded nowadays and Question2 is to question Why. If I'm following your direction correctly (and please correct me if I'm wrong), your questions are centered around the phenomena of Student Financial Assistance. If we're in agreement about examining this topic, might I propose that we structure a question around your proposed point "(b) accessibility of student loans, use of student loans and student indebtedness for those who have initiated post-secondary studies" Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with how student loans work in Canada because I just arrived here a year ago. If you can, please share your understanding on the matter to help inform the proposed question ideas below:

- Do you feel it is difficult to obtain a student loan?

- Do your loans sufficiently cover your school expenses?

- Do you feel student loans are at a reasonable rate?

- Do you feel that your school offers sufficient Student Awards/Subsidy opportunities?

Please let me know if I should post Question 1 and Question 2 from my February 3rd post and any thoughts you may have for these new questions.

Forgive my entering this discussion late, but from what I understand a more appropriate target population to sample would be graduating students. To discuss how grade 12 graduating students are going to pay for their schooling relies on a lot of speculation on their part, and it is quite common for students to change the direction of their education in the first year or two. By surveying those who are graduating we can instead move towards more concrete questions, such as "How did you pay for your education?" rather than "How do you intend to pay for your education?".

Secondly, while specific degrees and programs vary between post secondary institutions, a question involving every nuance and possibility is in my opinion unfeasible. To that end, I would propose such a question be disseminated into a few (9?) broader categories. Perhaps something as simple as follows:

"Which branch of study is your degree most related to?"

 a) Arts - Social Sciences
 b) Arts - Fine arts, music, design
 c) Business - Economics, Statistics
 d) Engineering - Mechanical, Computer, Architectural
 e) Sciences - Biology, Chemistry, Forestry, Geology
 f) Sciences - Math, Physics
 g) Care giving - Nursing, social work, palliative care
 h) Professional - Law, Doctoral, etc.
 I) Trade / Technical - Carpentry, Mechanics, technical design

From there if we also asked a question as to what level of education parents or guardians have, it would be simple to index the degree of parental financial support and corroboration between the student's degree and the parents / guardians without asking explicitly. Opinions?

In response to Joei's February 3rd post, I believe that we should move forward with those two questions.

The first question should control for the fact that a person from a wealthy family may not choose their program due to their family wealth, but due to their parents paying for their education.

Question 2 I might word a bit differently. This is because no matter what, your parents wealth has influence on the subjects education choice and thus your parents have influence on that decision. So I suppose it is redundant to ask that, since that is what we are trying to measure anyway. Essentially we are trying to measure the influence that a wealthy upbringing has on someone's educational choices, so parental "influence" goes hand in hand with that.

Perhaps the better question to ask would be "How heavily did your parents pressure you to pursue your degree path?" This would better measure the pressure that the child of a doctor may feel. That child may be heavily pressured to become a doctor as well. If we can capture parental pressure, which I believe is what Joei was trying to do, then we can control for it.

Hi Everyone, thanks for the comments. I'll post Question 1 as a finalized question on the Front Page since we all seem to be in agreement. Please, refer to the question at the bottom of this post to confirm that you are in agreement with the wording or if you would to add anything else.

In response to David's February 7 post, I understand your reservations about the wording of Question 2 being related to Question 1's measure of Parental Influence through Financial Support. Although, I'm not sure how we can operationalize "Parental Pressure" effectively. I suppose we could use a 1-10 point scale again for participants to rank for themselves. However, if we use the wording "How heavily did your parents pressure you to pursue your degree path" - this is assuming that the student's degree path is reflective of parent's choice. Perhaps a more general wording would be "Do you feel your parents support the Degree/Career path you have chosen to pursue?" This would run with our hypothesis that High degree of Parental Financial Support --leads to--> Higher degree of Influence --leads to--> Higher Liklihood that Parent and Child are in Agreement about Degree Track --SO--> Child has Higher degree of Support for Chosen Career Path. We assume the inverse that those who have Less Financing are more Independent about their Academic Decisions and there is a Higher Liklihood that Child will be pursuing a degree their parent's don't necessarily agree with = Lower levels of Support. It could be criticized that those who are willing to allow their child to support themselves financially are more likely to care less about their degrees But this still runs with our hypotheses that Families of Higher Income and Higher Degree of Financial Support have more set goals for their children and are naturally more involved.

Anyway, here is the proposed Question1 that I will post on the front page:

1) Do your Parents Fund your Post-Secondary Education?

If answer is 'YES' How much?

a)Entirely

b)Only School Semester Fees (credit course fees, exam fees)

c)Only Course Materials (books, course packs, stationary)

Please let me know if the proposed Question2 in this recent post is appropriate:

2) How supportive are your Parents with regards to the Career/Degree path you have Chosen to Pursue?

Where 1 is an indicator of No Support and Disagreement with your chosen Career/Degree Path and 10 an indicator of Complete Support and Agreement with your chosen Career/Degree Path:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Regarding the first question in Joei's Febuary 3rd post, I think it very appropriate and useful information but some further clarification is needed. With only three options presented regarding parental support (Entirely, fees, materials) it leaves out those (Like myself) who pay most of their way but occasionally receive some aid, or those who only have a set amount of support. Perhaps a revision of the wording would see the values broken into a % of total cost structure. For example:

1) To what extend do / did your Parents Fund your Post-Secondary Education?

 a)Not at all - 0%
 b)Nominally - 1% - 29%
 c)Moderately - 30% - 59%
 d)Mostly - 60% - 99%
 e)Completely - 100%

I would also elect to keep the second question regarding parental influence separate from the previous one, as I think it would be prudent to garner this information for every respondent, rather than just those who did not receive financial assistance. Thoughts?

Hey Derek,

I agree, this question would give us very accurate answers. We should try to make most or all of our questions similarily simple to answer by incorporating percentiles or simples numbered scales for the interviewees to answer.

I think Derek’s last point about breaking up the values into a percentage of the total cost structure is essential. We will generate more accurate data since, as Derek pointed out, the three options previously given will not be applicable to some students. By doing so we will be able to make a clearer analysis on whether or not ‘a high degree of university funding by parents increases the likelihood that the student will conform to parents' expectations with regard to degree/faculty choice’. So I’ll go ahead and make that change to question 1 but if there are any objections feel free to edit.

One issue we might run into with regards to Question 1 is if individual’s financing varied through their post-secondary education. For example if at first they were ‘mostly’ helped by their family and then as they start earning an income, it changes to ‘nominally’. However I recognize that it is probably difficult to control for. On that note, I also agree with Derek’s Feb 6 post regarding our sample pool. I think it would be more accurate, easy, and useful to measure graduating students or at least students in their third year or above of university. Sampling students who are in grade 12 will yield more inaccurate data as plans may change from the time they graduate from high school.

I would suggest that we ask a question as to what degree the participant is pursuing as well as the degree their parents (if any) hold. This would be an alternative means of finding a link between parent / child correlation in degrees.

Hey Guys,

I've been trying to think about questions along the lines of why students decide to attend post-secondary institutions. We may ask questions along the lines of 1. What was your biggest reason to attending post-secondary (e.g. future financial goals, knowledge, parents). There can be a few common answers listed under the question for the interviewee to circle. What are your thoughts?

hi guys, I like the idea of questions around why students decide to attend post secondary institutions. Here is a little spin on the above questions 1) What goal do you want to get out of a post-secondary education (personal development, job opportunities etc...) - some feedback would be great!

Hey guys, I just thought about looking at the relations between the household income and one’s post-secondary intention in terms of one’s pursuit of programs rather than faculties. This means looking at what Certificate, Diploma or Degree one is considering/pursuing by attending post-secondary educations: university certificate, diploma, medical degree, law degree, master’s degree, and etc. I think this way we could pursue both generality and parsimony.

Q) what programs are you enrolled in? Q) what programs are you pursuing? Q) If they had received a government loan, would they have attended a different type of institution (or different program)? Yes/ No Q) If they had received a financial support from their parents or guardians, would they have attended a different type of institution (or different program)? Yes/ No

Hi JinYoung. Thanks for your suggestion. I agree that Subject Choice would be a more parsimonious Dependent Variable as opposed to Faculty Choice - we cannot account for the fact that different universities have different Faculty programs/quality of teaching etc. whereas specific Degrees are more standardized because the scope of study is more focused towards a particular profession. From your last two proposed questions, I gather we can formulate a question with regards to studying the relationship between Financial Stability and the Pursuit of Post-graduate Degrees.

Hey Jin and Joe,

I agree with Joe that it makes more sense to keep the Subject choice as the dependent variable. Other questions we may go on to ask with regards to Financial Stability and pursuing graduate studies are: 1)Do you work part time? 2)Would you be interested if your program gave you the ability to take less classes so you may work more hours to pay your student fees? 3)Has the fear of carrying a financial burden ever caused you to change your acedemic goals?