October 21, 2008
Female Online Students Crave Conformity, Survey Shows
Salt Lake City — A survey of the social values and motivations of online students and face-to-face students at a Texas college found that female online students are more likely to rate conformity as a key motivator than those in traditional courses.
The survey was conducted by Brett Jorge Millan, interim director for distance education at South Texas College, and it drew responses from 157 online students and 486 face-to-face students at the institution. Mr. Millan presented the results at a poster session at the League for Innovation in the Community College’s annual technology conference here. The researcher used the Schwartz Value Scale to measure 10 motivational types: self-direction, stimulation, hedonism, achievement, power, security, conformity, tradition, benevolence, and universalism.
In general, however, the values of online students tended to be the same as those in face-to-face courses, he said. He found that far more women than men took online courses at his institution. And online students tended to be older than students in face-to-face courses.
The results are not yet available online. —Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Tuesday October 21, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
Commenting is closed for this article.
Previous: (Illegal) Access Hollywood: Universities and the Movie Industry Debate Piracy
Next: Professors Use Game-Show Format to Help Students Review for Exams
This is potentially quite interesting, the potential hinging upon the methodology, which is unclear from this report. For example, what does “drew responses” mean? Let’s hope more will be revealed …
— BertW Oct 22, 08:52 AM #
Right, and what do they mean by conformity in this context? I have no idea.
— N.D. Oct 22, 09:05 AM #
This is an astonishingly poor report. The methodology is unclear, the numbers small, very geographically limited and the headline is quite startling for what is reported. The study may be fine but this is very poor journalism.
Jan Poely
— Janet Poley Oct 22, 09:35 AM #
Schwartz describes conformity this way: “Restraint of actions, inclinations, & impulses likely to upset or harm others and violate social expectations or norms.” The 56 item Schwartz Value Survey has the participant rate how much they support individual values. In the case of the Conformity factor, individual items include Politeness, Obedience, and Honoring Parents and Elders.
The Schwartz Value Survey has demonstrated strong cross-cultural validity.
Schwartz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. In M. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology, Vol 25 (pp. 1-65). Orlando, FL: Academic Press
Schwartz, S. H. & Boehnke, K. (2004). Evaluating the structure of human values with confirmatory factor analysis. Journal of Research in Personality, Vol 38(3), 230-255.
— Nathan Oct 22, 09:40 AM #
It appears the results will be a “no brainer.” But I did learn a bit about the Schwartz Value Survey. Thanks Nathan.
— Dr. Bill Oct 22, 10:27 AM #
My concern is with the term “crave.” I think a value-scale can indicate “place importance on,” but to say, “crave?” Hmm.
— anton Oct 22, 11:51 AM #
Such studies should raise questions about radical pedagogy, which strives to distrupt inclinations toward conformity.
— James D. Williams Oct 22, 12:39 PM #
As the recently retired director of a national market online program of a regionally accredited institution, the reported results do not align with our, admittedly anecdotal, observations. I would like to see the study repeated on a broader basis (perhaps the Sloan Consortium could take this on) so that issues of sample size and geographic specificity can be addressed.
If the study results are valid, it does have, as noted by Dr. Williams, implications for the design, management, and pedagogy of online programs.
— David Binder Oct 22, 01:13 PM #
The Schartz definition of conformity: “Restraint of actions, inclinations, & impulses likely to upset or harm others and violate social expectations or norms” makes sense for online students. These are the students who are too timid to make comments in class because they are afraid of offending someone. These are the students who would enjoy the anonymity and relative social isolation of an online class environment.
— Makes sense... Oct 22, 01:49 PM #
And this tells me….what? Anything at all relevant to anything else? Why not administer this survey to all the tire guys over at Costco. Hey, did you know that the tire guys who wore boxers scored highest in respecting their elders, and most conformists brought their lunch instead of buying the $1.50 hot dog + drink special (which by the way is a damn good deal)?
— Dee Dee Pontiac Oct 22, 05:51 PM #
Anton—I have to agree with you. Using the word “crave” misrepresents the study’s conclusions. The research was meant to identify what value scales were more or less important to online as well as face-to-face students. That way, the two groups could be compared to each other. A better way of stating one of the conclusions would be that “females taking online classes rated Conformity values more important than females taking face-to-face courses.”
*Nathan—thanks for providing Schwartz’ definition of conformity. I really appreciate that. A comment isn’t long enough to explain the entire methodology. However, in a nutshell, I can say that all students taking predominantly online classes were asked to take the survey, in addition to a random cluster sampling of face-to-face sections. The numbers could have been much larger, but I wanted to limit the study to those students that were taking at least 9 hours, as this would indicate more a full-time student. And, true—it would be much better to have a larger sample and have the study replicated in a different geographic area. It was one of my recommendations and I would love to work with someone in a different area if they are interested.
Gender was never a primary focus, but rather one of the four controlling variables (Gender, Age, Learning Style, and Ethnicity). The focus rather was to see if a particular value scale might influence whether a student took online classes as opposed to face-to-face. None appeared to be a significantly different, though. The only differences appeared when gender was taken into account.
Anyway, you might find it interesting to know that in regards to Conformity, males rated them differently. Males taking online courses rated Conformity values less important as those that took face-to-face classes. Aside from stating that, we can only hypothesize why and what that might mean for us in distance ed.
Thanks for the interest! You all bring up some very valuable viewpoints.
Brett
— BrettM Oct 23, 12:48 PM #