Factors Associated with the Choice of College Major in Utah

NACTA Journal, Jun 2004 by Tarpley, Rudy S, Miller, Rhonda L

Materials and Methods

The purpose of this study was to identify factors which accounted for the variance between groups of Utah students, based on whether they planned to major in agriculture as taken from 2002 ACT Program Assessment registration information. The specific objectives of this study were to:

1. Describe Utah students who planned to major in an area of agriculture who took the 2002 ACT Program Assessment test according to gender, race, ACT composite score, and ACT sub scores; and

2. Determine which ACT Program Assessment student profile items, interest inventory classifications, and demographic variables accounted for a statistically significant amount of variance between students who planned to major in agriculture and students who planned to major in a program of study other than agriculture.

The population for this study included all students who took the 2002 ACT Assessment Program test in Utah (N = 18,177) and chose a college major during the registration process. The ACT Program Assessment is a measurement instrument which reports a composite score along with sub scores in English, mathematics, reading, and science reasoning. Students who registered for the assessment also provided demographic information, high school course and grade information as well as other information in a student profile section and interest inventory. This study utilized the information provided by the ACT Program Assessment.

The predictor variables were all responses to the student profile section, interest inventory percentile ranks, demographic information, and high school course and grade information supplied by test-takers as they completed the ACT Program Assessment registration booklet and examination. The ACT Program Assessment registration asked the students "Which college major (program of study) do you plan to enter?" Choices of college majors included 285 specific majors and a choice of undecided. From these choices, 13 were listed as agriculture majors in the registration booklet. The agriculture choices were comprised of Agricultural Sciences & Technologies (General); Agricultural Business; Agricultural Economics; Agricultural Mechanics; Agricultural Production/Technology; Agronomy; Animal Sciences; Farm and Ranch Management; Fish, Game, and Wildlife Management; Food Sciences/ Engineering; Forestry and Related Sciences; Horticulture/Ornamental Horticulture; and Natural Resources Management. Along with these choices of majors, five additional majors listed in the booklet were added to the category of agriculture majors Landscape Architecture, Agricultural Education, Agricultural Engineering, Veterinarian Assisting, and Veterinary Medicine.

The choices of college major were receded into a dichotomous variable of: (a) Agriculture Majors (all 18 of the chosen agricultural fields of study), and (b) Non-Agriculture Majors (all other majors). The receded variable of major was then used as the outcome variable. Data analysis consisted of descriptive statistics and a stepwise multiple regression using SPSS for Windows release 11.5.0. All significance tests were performed at the .01 level. An Alpha level of .01 was selected for this study because it was the typical level of significance employed by previous researchers utilizing similar ACT information in regression models with relatively large sample sizes (Heard & Ayers, 1988; Tarpley & Taylor, 1992; Sibert, 1989).