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Edward W. Chance Dissertation Award
For Doctoral Research in Rural Education
First-generation and rural college students are considered by many retention theorists and practitioners to be an at-risk population. This study examined the details of the first semester in postsecondary education from the perspective of a group of students who met the demographic criteria of being first-generation to go to college, from rural geographical areas, and from agricultural backgrounds. It focused on the first semester experience, during its occurrence, and how six students of this specific population viewed that phenomenon. A secondary objective was to determine if the understandings that issued from the research could form a foundation from which first semester retention strategies for this particular population could be configured.
Information about the essence of the first semester emerged from the responses of the participants to four primary research questions in a structured interview format: (1) What people or thing do you think influenced your decision to go to college? (2) When did you first decide that you were going to go to college? (3) Is your first semester the same or different than what you expected? (4)What does all of this mean to you? What is the meaning of your first semester in college?
The preponderance of research regarding first semester experiences has employed methods that are decidedly quantitative. Many are descriptive in nature and most tend to concentrate on a distinct student characteristic and attempt to find correlations between that characteristic and freshman attrition, or retention, as the case may be. The intent of this study, however, was to attempt to understand the meaning of the many facets of the first semester experience from the voices of the students themselves.
A phenomenological methodology provided the overall approach to the study (Moustakas, 1994). Data gathering was accomplished through in-depth, structured interviews with students who agreed to be participants in this study (Seidman, 1998). Within-case and cross-case analyses were employed as data explication methods (Banning, 2003; Hatch, 2002; Miles & Humberman, 1994). A process of abductive coding provided the means for identifying, labeling, categorizing, and verifying patterns and themes that emerged from the raw data in the interview transcripts.
Research Findings and Interpretations
The highest order of clustering of themes produced patterns...