Dropout and persistence phenomena of undergraduate students of burapha university: create a model to measure reasons of Selecting a major

Abstract

This research was a study on undergraduate students’ dropout and persistence phenomena with the purposes to: (1) explore the reasons for selecting a major, (2) create and develop a model to measure the reasons for selecting a major, and (3) compare differences of the reasons for selecting a major between persistence and dropout groups. There were three groups of sample including: Group 1 consisted of 60 students who were used for exploring the reasons for selecting a major, Group 2 consisted of 300 students who were used for creating and developing the measurement model, by which both groups gained from purposive sampling, and Group 3 consisted of 554 students who were used for comparing differences of the reasons for selecting a major gaining from stratified random sampling. The research instruments were a semi-structured interview and a questionnaire on reasons for selecting a major. The statistics used to analyze the data were exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and One-way MANOVA.

            The results found that: (1) there were 24 items of reasons for selecting a major gaining from content analysis, in which 78.33% of the students chose the majors according to their personal needs or affection, (2) the questions could be classified into four components including: 1) attitude towards the major that promoted self-progress, 2) external motivation, 3) opportunities from the selected major and 3) the values of Thai society. The measurement model was valid considering from the index values of the model including: = 1.673, RMSEA = 0.058, SRMR = 0.072, GFI = 0.903, AGFI = 0.856, NFI = 0.926, NNFI = 0.955, CFI = 0.966, collective validity (factor loading was between 0.636-0.727, extracted variance was 0.441 and construct validity was 0.759), and discriminative validity was ( > the average of extracted variance of both components), in which all of them had passed the evaluation criteria, and (3) the persistence and dropout students placed importance on the reasons for selecting a major on attitude towards the major that promoted self-progress, opportunities from the selected major and the values of Thai society with a slight difference. Both groups of students placed importance on external motivation with no difference.