Date of Award

1996

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

College

College of Education and International Services

Program

Educational Leadership PhD

First Advisor

James A. Tucker

Second Advisor

Lenore S. Brantley

Third Advisor

Wilfred Futcher

Abstract

For the past 3 decades, retention studies have emerged as being of significant importance to the smaller colleges and universities, especially the private colleges and universities, including Summit Christian College. With the decline in the high-school population, which was predicted to occur in the mid-70s, retention was going to be of even more importance to the smaller educational institutions. All of this pointed toward a time when colleges would have to compete for the high-school graduate in a more aggressive manner. It was possible that unless new ways of coping with the drop-out rate were initiated, a number of smaller schools would go out of business.

The purpose of this study was to identify the relationship between personality types of faculty members and the personality types of students at Summit Christian College and to determine if there is any relationship between faculty personality types and student personality types and student retention. The data for this study came from the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Please Understand Me test (an adaptation of the Myers-Briggs Temperament Traits test). The tests were administered to all full-time faculty members (M-BTI) employed in 1990 and 1991 and to all new students enrolled in the Freshmen Orientation course in 1990 (PUM) and 1991 (M-BTI).

The research was conducted over the 2-year period; there was a response rate of 100%. The results of the study indicate that the Sensing-Judging, Intuitive-Feeling, and Intuitive-Thinking personality types of faculty members are correlated with the Sensing-Judging, Sensing-Perceptive, Intuitive- Feeling, and Intuitive-Thinking student personality types represented at Summit Christian College in determining which students are more apt to remain in college and which ones are more likely to drop out. The combinations of Sensing-Judging with, Intuitive-Feeling, and Intuitive- Thinking faculty personality types correlate positively with the Sensing-Judging students in retention. No other combination of faculty personality types correlates positively with the retention of the other three student personality types.

Recommendations for institutional policy and practice are included in the discussion of the results.

Subject Area

College students--United States--Recruiting; College attendance--United States; Teacher-student relationships

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/10.32597/dissertations/560

Download

Files over 3MB may be slow to open. For best results, right-click and select "save as..."

Share

COinS