The role of the instructor in influencing students' attitudes, beliefs, and concerns toward group projects was assessed in a survey of students at 32 educational institutions. Results from a path-analytic model support the view that the instructor plays a significant role in influencing students' attitudes, perceived benefits, and work and grade equity concerns regarding group work. The research showed that students were more likely to have positive attitudes about group work if they had instructors who discussed group management issues (e.g., group dynamics) and used methods to evaluate individual performance within the group (e.g., peer evaluations). In addition, the findings indicate that in general, instructors are not doing enough to facilitate students' group experiences.
The need for continuous improvement in a marketing curriculum requires periodic outcomes assessments. Part of the process includes a monitoring of the relevance of a marketing curriculum to a graduate's work environment. This article describes a process for conducting an outcomes assessment and the results of an actual alumni assessment encompassing skill and knowledge areas. Specifically, a gap analysis approach was employed in which the importance of key skill and knowledge areas to one's current employment were contrasted with perceptions of their own academic preparation in these areas. Our results indicate that marketing alumni perceive that they are underprepared in skills and overprepared in designated knowledge areas. The implications of the findings are discussed as well as the utility of the gap analysis in outcomes assessment.The continuous improvement process for a marketing major calls for an examination of marketing curricula in several respects-coverage of theory, application, currency of information, and relevance to the careers of marketing alumni. The relevance aspect of curriculum improvement can be assessed in part by asking marketing graduates about the extent to which their marketing education prepared them for their marketing careers. This article examines the relevancy of marketing curriculum through a gap analysis applied to marketing alumni.Gap analysis is a concept that has received much attention since it was presented in the services marketing literature by Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry (1985). These authors described a gap as a divergence between either an expected service and a perceived (delivered) service from a customer's point of view or the difference between a service provider's specified level of service and the service actually delivered. Overall, measurement can be made objectively in terms of "what the consumer receives as a result of his interactions with a service firm" (Lewis and Klein 1986, p. 33). In the context of our study, we measure the difference between the service that was delivered-marketing curriculum-and the students' or consumers' perceptions of the relevance of that service to their careers. The variables that we employ encompass skill and marketing knowledge areas. GAP STUDIESGap analyses may take several forms. To illustrate, Nordstrom and Sherwood (1997) compared undergraduate and graduate perceptions of the adequacy of skills and characteristics required by the work environment. Winer (1998) described a gap analysis approach to assessing the administration of a business school, including the design of curricula to meet employers' expectations. Giacobbe and Segal (1994) also used a gap model to explore the performance interrelationships that existed between marketing students, marketing research educators, and marketing research practitioners. Their study examined perceptions of performance skills and abilities desired by practitioners relative to the extent of their delivery. Lundstrom and White (1997) also used a gap analysis to measure perceptual ...
This study tests the universality of the Western-based concept known as cognitive age within Japan. It assesses both the internal and external validity of cognitive age among Japanese seniors and compares the findings to the same measures of cognitive age with a sample of senior respondents from the United States. The study finds that the semantic differential scale has the largest trait variance among all aging concepts studied (average cognitive age, average ideal age, and average least-desired age), while the Likert scale possesses the largest trait variance for average cognitive age. The ratio scale was found to have the lowest trait variance of the three scaling formats evaluated. External construct validation studies revealed a remarkable similarity between Japanese females and males, and contrasts between Japanese and American seniors revealed reasonably good generalizability between countries. Average cognitive age appears to be universal within two culturally disjoint countries (the United States and Japan), yet the efficacy of individual measurement scales varies between them.
We extend the concept of cognitive age and assess the internal validity of a direct, multiple‐item approach to its measurement. A multitrait–multimethod matrix consisting of the correlations between average cognitive age, ideal age, and least desired age, as measured by three methods (semantic differential, ratio, and Likert scales), was developed and analyzed using three models: confirmatory factor analysis, correlated uniqueness, and direct product. The correlated uniqueness model performed well in terms of goodness‐of‐fit, and the results provide evidence of convergent and discriminant validity, as well as the strength of age traits, relative to methods, in explaining matrix variance. Also, the semantic differential scale performed best in explaining the trait variance of a composite of cognitive age measures. The findings provide strong support for the internal validity of the cognitive age concept and the use of the semantic differential as the scale of choice for cognitive age research.
Learning styles of marketing students have changed over the years. Changes have also occurred in emphases placed by the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business, universities, schools, and departments on meeting student learning needs. This study measures the pedagogical preferences of marketing seniors and alumni and relates them to a global attitude toward the marketing major. This approach may be used in any marketing program as a potential attitudinal enhancement mechanism, since key pedagogies can be identified. In turn, the motivation and learning potential of pedagogies can be evaluated. Results indicate an association between in-class activities and overall attitude toward the marketing major.
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