Maturity and personality growth in community college students

Abstract

Research in the area of personality and maturity growth in college students has been considerable since Jacob's controversial study in 1957, but the results are not conclusive and very little of this research has been conducted with community college students. The purpose of this study was to identify some maturity and personality differences among several subgroups of community college students, including freshman, sophomore, male, female, transfer, occupational and undecided students. A secondary goal was to evaluate a new instrument, the College Student Inventory, as a measure of college student maturity. The sample consisted of 253 students enrolled in Wharton County Junior College during the 1975-76 academic year. The freshman subjects were tested in September, 1975, and the sophomore subjects were tested in April, 1976. The instruments used to test for differences among the subgroups included the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16 PF), the Rokeach Dogmatism Scale, and a new instrument designed at Texas A&M University, the College Student Inventory (CSI). The Personal Data Questionnaire (PDQ) was used to gather demographic data about each subject. An analysis of variance was used to test for differences among subgroups in the first phase of the study, and a multiple regression analysis was used to obtain correlations between the CSI and several predictors in the second phase of the study..