Date of Award

2017

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Counselor Education (PhD)

Department

Education

First Advisor/Committee Member

Dr. Cher Edwards

Second Advisor/Committee Member

Dr. Munyi Shea

Third Advisor/Committee Member

Dr. Mary-Jo Larsen

Keywords

prospective first generation college student, middle school, mentorship, social-cognitive theory

Abstract

The need for students of all backgrounds to access and persist in postsecondary education informs a need for additional support related to postsecondary attainment for all people. Social cognitive theory (SCT; Bandura, 1987) and social cognitive career theory (SCCT; Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994) both support the design, implementation, and measurement of college-going interventions that work to enhance self-efficacy, a mediator in college interest, choice, and attendance. Thus, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a college-going intervention on the college-going self-efficacy beliefs of a group of diverse middle school students. Specifically, this study examined the effect of an eight-week college-going mentorship program rooted in Bandura’s four sources of self-efficacy on college-going self-efficacy.

A quasi-experimental non-equivalent group design was employed in this study. Participants were seventh-grade students from a large urban school district in the Pacific Northwest. The control group was students who participated in the college-going intervention. The intervention group consisted of a comparable group of students who did not participate in the intervention. The dependent variable was college-going self-efficacy measured on the College-Going Self-Efficacy Scale (Gibbons, 2005) at pretest and posttest.

Descriptive and inferential statistics were computed to respond to the research question. Inferential statistics were derived from a one-way ANCOVA after data were analyzed to confirm the assumptions of an ANCOVA. The pretest scores on the College-Going Self-Efficacy scale were treated as the covariate. Tests of statistical significance were analyzed at the .05 level.

A one-way ANCOVA revealed that there was no statistically significant difference between the intervention and the control group on college-going self-efficacy following the college-going intervention and after controlling for the covariate. Thus, the obtained data did not support the findings and hypotheses of recent studies that interventions rooted in sources of self-efficacy have significantly affected self-efficacy.

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