Changes in the Opinions of Female Students after One Year at a University

Differential personality development in young adults of markedly different aptitude levels.

“…Contrary to the widely read and quoted conclusions of Jacob (1957), all reported studies of personality change in college students during college indicate that measurable changes occur. From the earliest studies (Corey, 1936(Corey, , 1940Kuhlen, 1941;Newcomb, 1943) to the last published study (Lehmann, Sinha, & Hartnett, 1966), and reviews on the topic (Bloom & Webster, 1960;McCullers & Plant, 1964;Webster, Freedman, & Heist, 1962), changes in attitude, interest, personality, and value test scores have been reported for college students during their college years. With respect to certain of the variables with which the present study is concerned, it has been consistently reported from institutions as different as Michigan State University (Lehmann, 1963;Lehmann & Dressel, 1962, 1963Lehmann et al, 1966), San Jose State College (Plant, 1958a(Plant, , 1958b(Plant, , 1962(Plant, , 1965 Santa Clara (Foster, Stanek, & Krassowski, 1961), Vassar College (Freedman, 1960Webster, 1958;Webster et al, 1962), and six California junior colleges (Telford & Plant, 1963) that:…”

Opinion-attitude methodology.

“…Regardless of how small or how large the mean change in an attitude as students progress through college, one can be reasonably sure that individual shifts of considerable size have taken place. The correlations reported by Bugelski and Lester (13), Farnsworth (36), Hunter (60), and Newcomb (96) for attitude scores obtained as freshmen and as seniors are .42 or less, whereas for freshmen versus sophomore scores Corey (28) reports values ranging from .28 to .61 for various attitudes. Darley (30) found test-retest r's in the .60's for autumn and winter versus spring testing on the Rundquist-Sletto scales.…”

Influence of college science courses on the development of attitude toward evolution.

“…Purpose The general purpose of the present investigation was to bring out any discoverable curriculum influences on development of students' attitude toward evolution The specific purposes were: (1) to find out whether study of science and mathematics in high school had any relation to students' attitude toward evolution at the time they entered college; (2) to discover the changes in attitude toward evolution made by college freshmen m a regular college course which included two semesters of biology, mathematics, or chemistry, or a combination of two semesters each of biology and chemistry; (3) to compare the changes in freshmen's attitude toward evolution with those made by students in a one year commercial course which had no science studies in it; (4) to discover the changes in attitude toward evolution made by upper class students who took a freshman science course, or an advanced course in anatomy.…”