Research Project 2 Old People at College

Santrock reports in Chapter 20 that more older adults than ever before are going to college. He indicates that college performance among these individuals is related to intelligence and information processing skills, but is only able to speculate on the variety⁷ of reasons older people go to college.

Are there elderly adults attending your college? If there are, why are they there? Try to answer these questions for this project.

First, find out how many elderly people attend your school. This information should be available from the registrar. After you (or your instructor) obtains institutional approval, contact four or more of these people and invite them to participate in a project in which you learn their reasons for attending college.

You may choose any method you like to discover their reasons, but one possibility is to have your respondents rate reasons suggested by Santrock in Chapter 20. For example, you could prepare a brief questionnaire in which people indicate how strongly they agree that they are attending college for a specified reason. Have people use a seven-point rating scale (1 = most strongly disagree, 7 = most strongly agree) to express their agreement with the statements listed below. An alternative (or additional) approach would be to have people answer one or two open-ended questions that you put to them in an interview (e.g., "Why are you going to college?").

Whatever method you use, write a brief paper that summarizes your findings. If you have used a questionnaire, construct an appropriate table to show average (mean) ratings. If you have relied exclusively on interviews, report any common themes in individual's responses. If you have done both, be sure to indicate how well the findings from both methods support each other as well as summarizing what they uncover, Discuss your findings in terms of the issues raised by Santrock in Chapter 20.

Sample Questionnaire Items "Why I am Going to College"

1. I want to understand aging better.

2. I want to understand the social changes that have so changed my life.

3. I want to understand the technical changes that have so changed my life.

4. I want to obtain knowledge I need to meet societal demands I now experience.

5. I want to obtain skills I need to meet societal demands I now experience.

6. I need new knowledge to stay competitive at my job.

7. I need new skills to stay competitive at my job.

8. I need to learn a new job.

9. I want to learn more about myself.

10. I want to learn leisure activities for retirement.

Chapter 21

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