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Student impressions of academic advisor efficacy: A comparison of two models
Abstract
The study investigated students' impressions of academic advisor efficacy at a public four-year institution. The focus was on college-level academic advising provided by full-time staff academic advisors compared to academic advising delivered by faculty. The level of student impressions of academic advising, the dependent variable, was analyzed using ten independent variables: students' age, students' grade level classification, students' gender, students' weekly hours employed, students' campus residence location (on or off campus), students' length of time with current advisors, students' ethnicity, students' enrollment status (full or part-time), students' choice of college, and advisor type (full-time faculty or staff). The data were collected from 422 students enrolled in entry-level history classes during the Spring 2002 academic term. Students were asked to anonymously complete ACT's Survey of Academic Advising. Factor analysis was used to identify dimensions of students' impressions of advisors from the set of 36 variables in Section IV of the survey instrument. Factor analysis demonstrated the 36 variables were of similar dimension, (loaded at greater than 0.60 and thus could be considered “high” (Garson, 2002) which allowed for utilization of a total score. A two-way analysis of variance for the total score from the survey items was utilized as the statistical method for testing the hypotheses developed from the nine research questions. The data analysis yielded two significant interactions. The first, interaction between student grade-level classification and advisor type, indicated freshmen had more favorable impressions of staff advisors while upper-class students had more favorable impressions of faculty advisors. The second, between students' length of time with their advisor and advisor type, suggested students who continued with a staff advisor for longer than six moths reported less favorable impressions of their advisors. The study found a significant main effect between students' college-major and impressions of advisors. Students reported less favorable impressions of advising center staff in College “C” compared to the other colleges.
Subject Area
School administration|Academic guidance counseling
Recommended Citation
Boyle, James Roy, "Student impressions of academic advisor efficacy: A comparison of two models" (2002). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI3070122.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI3070122