Changes in Students' Attitudes as Measured by a Semantic Differential Instrument; Employer-Based Career Education; Technical Report No. 39

The report evaluates attitudinal changes among the 44 Appalachia Educational Laboratory's Employer-Based Career Education (AEL/EBCE) students during the 1972-73 academic year, as measured by the semantic differential, a test in which students were asked to select one of seven spaces separating bipolar adjectives for each of 20 pairs of adjectives describing nine different concepts or abstractions. Students examined at the beginning of their involvement in the program (Group One beginning in September 1972 and Group Two beginning in January 1973) indicated a positive attitude to only one concept, education; all other concepts were viewed as neutral. The data also indicated that the attitudes of Group One students remained fairly stable during the year. A comparative analysis of the Group One and Group Two students showed that none of the group main effects were statistically significant on any of the nine concepts, and that although some group by adjective interaction effects were found, none were meaningful in terms of the questions for which answers were sought. Of the report's three appendixes, one reproduces the semantic differential test instrument, and two provide statistical tables depicting analyses of variance for the test concepts. (Author/JR)