Award Date

1-1-2007

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Educational Psychology

First Committee Member

E. Michael Nussbaum

Number of Pages

71

Abstract

This study sought to improve upon the definition of nontraditional student status, and to identify relationships between student status, goal orientations, and coping strategies. Two of this study's hypotheses included the expectation that nontraditional students would employ more adaptive goal orientations (e.g. mastery-approach) more often than traditional students; and students who use more adaptive goal orientations would employ more adaptive coping strategies (e.g. task-oriented coping); This study involved 180 undergraduates, and used a participant information questionnaire, the Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations (CISS), and the Achievement Goal Questionnaire (AGQ). Factor and cluster analyses revealed that the variables age, marital status, parental status, and whether time was ever taken off from school, shared enough variance to allow the identification of two clusters. Correlations and regressions showed that the nontraditional student cluster used mastery-approach goals more than the traditional cluster, and confirmed a significant relationship between mastery-approach goal orientation and task-oriented coping.

Keywords

Coping; Goal; Nontraditional; Orientations; Strategies; Students; Traditional

Controlled Subject

Educational psychology; Education, Higher

File Format

pdf

File Size

2129.92 KB

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

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