EFFECTS OF TWO COUNSELING APPROACHES ON INSTITUTIONAL INTEGRATION AND PERSISTENCE OF HIGH RISK COLLEGE STUDENTS (MENTORING, STUDENT RETENTION, HIGHER EDUCATION)
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of two counseling approaches, mentoring counseling and traditional counseling, on the degree of social and academic integration, goal and institutional commitment of first year high risk college students. Tinto (1975) theorized that these integration variables are directly related to student retention in college. Pascarella and Terenzini (1980a) developed a five-scale instrument, the Institutional Integration Scales, to measure Tinto's integration variables. This instrument was used in this investigation to assess the integration level of 70 college students who had participated in two different counseling programs. The two groups were also compared in terms of persistence in the institution. The participants were selected from a total population of 524 first-year students who had less than a 2.00 high school grade index. Thirty-five students were randomly assigned to a mentoring-counseling program and 35 to the traditional counseling program. Under mentoring-counseling, students were assigned to a faculty member, designated as mentor, who closely followed each student during the semester, providing needed assistance, including mentor-initiated assistance. In the traditional program, students were assigned to a regular school counselor who met with the students initially to explain available services and to encourage them to seek needed assistance. Further visits to the counselor's office, however, had to be student initiated. The experiment lasted 10 weeks, at the end of which, all subjects were administered the Institutional Integration Scales. The results revealed that students who participated in mentoring-counseling obtained significantly higher mean scores on social integration, academic integration, goal commitment and institutional commitment. Additional analyses also showed that: (a) there were no significant differences in the means of social integration, academic integration, goal commitment or institutional commitment between male and female subjects; (b) there were no significant differences in the rate of re-enrollment between the two treatment groups. These findings suggest than an active counseling approach, such as mentoring, may be more effective than traditional counseling methods in increasing the social and academic integration, goal and institutional commitment of high risk students.
Subject Area
Higher education
Recommended Citation
RODRIGUEZ RODRIGUEZ, RAMON, "EFFECTS OF TWO COUNSELING APPROACHES ON INSTITUTIONAL INTEGRATION AND PERSISTENCE OF HIGH RISK COLLEGE STUDENTS (MENTORING, STUDENT RETENTION, HIGHER EDUCATION)" (1986). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI8616827.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI8616827
