Research Question and Hypothesis

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