Studying Unicorns: Single-Father Student Educational Attainment and Tinto’s Model
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Authors
Sweet, Corrine
Issue Date
2021-04
Type
Dissertation
Language
en_US
Keywords
Dissertations, Academic--United States , Tinto, Vincent , Single fathers , College students , Adult students , Educational attainment
Alternative Title
Abstract
This quantitative study utilized Tinto’s model of academic attrition and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) to explore the educational attainment of a rarely studied group, single-father students.
For the first question, “What effects do the parental status, marital status, and gender of a student have on educational attainment?” data collected for the NLSY97, n = 8,984, was utilized to compare academic attainment amongst participants in regards to gender, marital status, and parental status. Through a series of non-parametric tests, it was found that single, childless, female students had higher educational attainment than any other group, followed by married parent-students of both genders and single-mother students.
For the second question, “What effects do Tinto’s pre-entry attributes of family background, skills and abilities, and prior schooling, have on educational attainment of the single-father student?” the impact of seven independent variables, representing Tinto’s pre-entry attributes, on educational attainment for single-father students, n = 44 after removal of incomplete records, was studied. Non-parametric tests were utilized to study the relationship between the seven independent variables and educational attainment; an ordered logistic regression was conducted to study the relationship between the independent variables as a group and educational attainment of the single-father student. Results were largely non-significant; however, positive relationships were found to exist between educational attainment and occupation, parents in the childhood home, and average hours worked per week. While non-significant, these results do provide insight into potential future areas of research regarding the single-father student.
Keywords: Tinto, single-father students, adult learners, NLSY97, educational attainment, pre-entry attributes
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This dissertation is protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States (Public Law 94-553, revised in 1976). Consistent with fair use as defined in the Copyright Laws, brief quotations from this material are allowed with proper acknowledgement. Use of the materials for financial gain with the author's expressed written permissions is not allowed.