The relation of students' needs to their perceptions of a college environment.

Abstract

Over the past 3 years the College Characteristics Index (CCI) (Stern & Pace, 1958) has been filled out by several thousand students in more than a hundred colleges (Pace, 1960;Pace & Stern, 1958; Thistlethwaite, 1959). The instrument is intended to give an estimate of the press of the college environment. The 30 press scales in the CCI parallel the 30 needs scales in the Stern Activities Index (AI) (Stern, 1958). In using and interpreting the instrument, it is clearly important to know whether the personality of the students who answer its items has any appreciable relationship to the way they answer them. McConnell and Heist (1959), noting that the personality characteristics of student bodies vary widely from one college to another, and even between colleges which are highly selective in scholastic aptitude, have raised the question: "Do students make the college?" If one is to study the interaction between students and environments one must have independent estimates of each. The CCI should give an estimate of the environmental press independent of the personality needs of the students responding to it. Does it in fact do so? This study attempted to answer this question on two levels: the general relation between corresponding need and press measures, and the specific relation of each CCI 1 This paper is based on the writer's MA thesis in Psychology at Syracuse University.The author wishes to thank C. R. Pace for his extensive suggestions and guidance throughout the course of the study.

Personality and motivational factors in responses to an environmental description scale.

“…The evidence relating to S correlates of responses to perceptual environmental scales is somewhat sparse (Herr, 1965;McFee, 1961;Saunders, 1962). After an extensive factor analysis of the CCI and its companion personality scales, the Activities Index (AI), Saunders concluded that the scale scores of the environmental measure were independent of the personality of the respondent.…”

“…The evidence relating to subject correlates of responses to environmental scales is somewhat sparse (Herr, 1965;McFee, 1961;Saunders, 1962).…”

College Environment: Differential Perceptions of Black Minority Students

“…The basic rationale of the CCI is that environmental press is indicated by consensual behavioral perceptions inferred from student self-reports of specific activities. Thistle-thwaite (1959), McFee (1961), Standing and Parker (1964), Seymour (1968), and Seymour and Richardson (1972) are previous investigators who used the CCI to study college environments.…”

Personality Correlates of the College and University Environment Scales

“…Evidence is cited in the CUES manual (Pace, 1963, p. 56), as well as from a study by McFee (1961), to support the assumption that CUES scores are unrelated to the characteristics of individuals. This is an important assumption from the point of view which separates individual and environment; in this frame of reference, a correlation suggests that subjective factors are influencing or distorting the objective characterizations of the environment.…”