Faculty of Education - Theses

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    Relationships between extraversion, neuroticism, trait anxiety and trait curiosity
    Dickie, Barrie T. (University of Melbourne, 1977)
    Three personality scales measuring four constructs were administered to a group of 230 second year teachers' college students. The results of the testing were then submitted to correlational and factor analysis to investigate four hypotheses. These were: (i) that Trait Anxiety non-reversed items measured substantially the same construct as measured by E�senck's Neuroticism scale; (ii) that Trait Anxiety non-reversed items measured a different construct to that measured by Trait Anxiety reversed items; (iii) that Trait Curiosity non-reversed items measured a different construct to that measured by Trait Curiosity reversed items; (iv) that Trait Anxiety reversed was substantially the same construct as Trait Curiosity non-reversed. The analyses provided only equivocal support for hypothesis (i) and none at all, surprisingly, for the intuitively plausible hypothesis (iv). Hypotheses (i�) and (iii) received very strong support. The vexed question of the disappearance of the reversed item factors in the second order solution is raised. A case is argued that the phenomenon can be understood in statistical terms as an artifact of the analyses. Finally, a suggestion is made for a new relationship between personality theory and measurement.
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    Relation of anxiety and adjustment to educational environment
    McMillan, J. A. ( 1975)
    This investigation was concerned with the effect of different educational environments on factors associated with personality development, particularly adjustment and anxiety. The report was divided into two parts. The first part was concerned with a critical analysis of certain contemporary theories of education and with the empirical evidence relevant to these theories. The second part used the major beliefs of the theories as grounds for hypotheses which were tested with one hundred and seven tertiary students doing the Diploma of Education at the Melbourne State College in 1973. The theories in question all assume the intrinsic goodness of man and his urge for "self-actualization" when he is operating in a free and unconstrained manner. These theories derived from the writings of humanistic psychology and particularly from the work of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow and are expressed in the writings of educators including John Holt, Everett Reimer, and George Dennison. In the first part of the investigation the theories were scrutinized both from the point of view of logical consistency and from that of empirical evidence relating to such concepts as self esteem, persuasibility, adjustment and anxiety in educational and non-educational contexts. In the second part, Rogers' own non-normative definition of adjustment was used to ascertain whether there were any changes during the course of the year in the adjustment of students in three different types of educational environment. Rogers (1954) believed that good adjustment was characterized by a small discrepancy between self and ideal self concept. He argued that good adjustment occurred when people were allowed to act freely and make their own decisions without interference from others. It was therefore hypothesized that students in an unstructured group, given maximum opportunity to decide their own educational activities, would exhibit superior adjustment to students in either a semi-structured or highly structured group. The adjustment of students in the semi-structured group was hypothesized to be next best to that of students in the unstructured group, while the adjustment of students in the highly structured group was hypothesized to be the worst of students in any of the three groups. Adjustment in this study was taken to be the distance between the concepts "Myself" and "The Person I'd Like To Be". These concepts and eight others judged to be of importance to either self esteem or education, were rated on a seven point semantic differential scale in relation to eighteen bi-polar adjectival scales (Osgood, Suci and Tannenbaum, 1957). It was also hypothesized that both the trait anxiety measured on the first testing occasion, and state anxiety measured on three occasions over the year, would be lowest in the unstructured group, higher in the semi-structured group and highest in the most highly structured group. The measures of anxiety used were devised by Spielberger, Gorsuch and Lushene (1970). Pre-test analyses of variance, repeated measures analyses and covariance analyses in which scores on the third testing were covaried for scores on the first testing, all failed to support the two main experimental hypotheses. A hierarchical grouping analysis, which is a purely descriptive technique for examining data, lent tentative support to the hypothesis regarding the superior adjustment of the unstructured group. On the pre-test analyses there were significant interactions between group membership and anxiety level. There were also significant results obtained from group differences alone and from differences in the level of trait anxiety. However, none of these differences revealed superior adjustment or significantly lower trait anxiety for the unstructured group. Further, when covariance analyses were carried out only one significant difference between groups remained. This concerned School Principals and Unpleasant and Bad Things. The structured group judged these concepts to be significantly further apart than did the unstructured group. This suggested different attitudes towards authority figures by students in the two groups. While the unstructured group failed to show the superior adjustment expected by the Rogerian hypotheses, or a significantly lower level of either trait or state anxiety, there were significant group differences on initial trait anxiety as revealed by an analysis of variance. There were also significant differences in state anxiety as revealed by a repeated measures analysis over three occasions. For both measures of anxiety, it was the semi-structured or core-elective group which exhibited significantly lower levels of anxiety than either the unstructured or highly structured groups. Contrary to the hypotheses the unstructured group and the highly structured group had anxiety levels (both trait and state) of a markedly similar kind. It was concluded that membership of the group allowing most freedom, did not have the hypothesized effect of producing superior adjustment or lower levels of either trait or state anxiety. Further, the lack of significant results after the covariance analyses suggested that educational environment, regardless of whether it was unstructured, semi-structured or highly structured, did not radically alter the adjustment or anxiety levels of the tertiary students who were the subjects of this investigation. Implications for education were discussed.
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    Delimitation of state and trait curiosity in relation to state anxiety and performance on a learning task
    Boyle, Gregory John ( 1977)
    The present study aimed to test the validity of the state-trait curiosity distinction; to investigate the effect of manipulating state curiosity (via written instructional sets) upon subsequent learning; and to assess further the reliability and validity of the state (C-State) and trait (C-Trait) curiosity scales. Subjects comprised 300 senior secondary school students (159 males, 141 females) in grades 10, 11, and 12 of a Melbourne suburban high school. The students were assigned randomly to one of three instructional treatment groups in an attempt to differentially stimulate different levels of C-State. The instructional treatments comprised: (i) Curiosity Stimulating Instructions (CSI); (ii) Neutral Instructions (NI); and (iii) Boredom Inducing Instructions (BII) respectively. These treatments preceded the first administration of the test-battery (comprising the C-State, SECS, STAIC A-State, and C-Trait scales in that order). A learning task (a prose passage about moon landings) ensued, followed immediately by the second administration of the test-battery. Finally, a posttest of immediate retention permitted an assessment of each treatment group's performance on the learning task. Alpha coefficients were high for both the C-State and C-Trait scales and subscales (ranging from .86 to .92). As expected, stability (test-retest) correlations were higher for the C-Trait scale and subscales than for the C-State ones. However in view of the short time interval of only 15-20 minutes between the two testing occasions, a higher correlation than .77 might have been expected for the C-Trait scale. Correlations between the respective curiosity measures were all positive and significant at better than the 1% level. Correlations between each curiosity measure and the A-State scale were all negative and significant at better than the 1% level. Correlations between the reversed and nonreversed subscales of the various measures generally supported these findings. However only tentative support for the state-trait curiosity distinction resulted. The factor analytic results were dominated by the reversed and nonreversed items and subscales which loaded orthogonal factors to a large extent. These findings (in conjunction with the ANOVA results) suggested that the reversed items should be eliminated from the C-State and C-Trait scales. ANOVA results also indicated that only for females in grade 12 did the instructional sets influence state curiosity and subsequent learning performance as predicted. Hence the present findings provided only partial support for the experimental hypotheses. The implications of these findings were discussed both with reference to the experiment .per se, and also in regard to previous conceptualization in the curiosity domain.
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    Differential arousal of state anxiety and problem solving performance
    Ball, I. L. ( 1972)
    In Part A of an experiment, tertiary students were assigned at random to either failure or success experiences with three types of task materials. The effects of manipulations on reported state anxiety levels were examined using pro-treatment levels as the covariate. Data from ten replications indicated that, although adjusted means of failure groups were significantly higher than those of success groups, the magnitude of anxiety arousal depended upon the material used in the experimental treatment. Results indicated that exposure to anagram materials produced more marked variation in anxiety levels than either number or vocabulary materials. It was clear that students experiencing stronger failure showed higher adjusted state anxiety scores than did students experiencing milder failure or success. Greater lability of scores was found for female subjects and state anxiety arousal was found to be correlated significantly with proneness to test anxiety. In Part B, which was quasi-experimental, all subjects worked through a set of letter series problems. In post-hoc analyses, subjects within the failure or success treatments were classified by degree of proneness to test anxiety and level of orientation towards achievement. Levels of test anxiety and aroused state anxiety were associated with differences in both number of problems attempted and number of items abandoned. A significant triple interaction on the log time spent correctly solving problems, suggested that high state anxiety could either facilitate or debilitate performance depending on the strength of the trait differences. These results were consistent with the hypothesised operation of either impulsive or reflective strategies activated to cope with high anxiety arousal. It was found that reversed items of the State Anxiety Scale tended to reflect increases in situational stress to a greater extent than did directly stated items. The practice of reversing the scoring weights on reversed items to derive state anxiety scores does not appear to produce an exact alignment with the meaning of the directly stated anxiety items.