EFFECTS OF COOPERATIVE EDUCATION ON STUDENT ADAPTATION TO UNIVERSITY ¹

Students in cooperative education programs are subject to unusual and conflicting role demands: for a few months they must assume the worker role and then when they return to college or university they must quickly assume the student role. Even during their terms on campus they have work-related requirements, such as preparation of resumes, employment interviews, and work term reports. They are required to spend lengthy periods of time away from the campus, and often must move from place to place like some kind of skilled transient. As a result, their social and academic lives are frequently disrupted. The stresses caused by these conflicting demands might be expected to result in less adequate personal and social adaptation, as well as poor adjustment to college and university life in general. Some indication of the greater stress experienced by co-op students has already been noted by Smithers (1976), and discussed more fully by Ashworth, Saxon, and Buckle (1989).

In contrast, however, reviews of research on the outcomes of cooperative education by Wilson (1987) and Fletcher (1989) have reported generally positive effects for participants in co-op programs. These effects were particularly pronounced in the areas of interpersonal skills, self ­confidence and independence, and a more positive self-concept. For example, Wilson (1974) found co-op students reported greater self­ confidence, more autonomy and tolerance, and better social skills than did non-co-op students. Gillin, Davie and Beissel (1984) found co-op students in some, but not all, programs to have enhanced self-concepts. Many of the studies in this area have used unstandardized measures of self-report to assess personal growth, and some did not make use of control groups of non-co-op students. None of the research that has been done in this area has directly examined the effect of co-op on adjustment to student life.

While the extra demand experienced by co-op students might suggest relatively poor adaptation to university, the evidence for personal growth might indicate that co-op students learn to cope with these stresses, and even benefit from their experiences. The present study was designed to compare the adaptation of co-op students to university life with that of regular students. Because differences might be expected as a function of length of time in the program, students from all four years were surveyed. Further, in order to evaluate the generality of the findings, students from three faculties (Arts, Science, and Mathematics) which offer both co-op and regular programs, were included. Both men and women participated in the study.

Method

Subjects. A total of 334 undergraduates at the University of Waterloo completed the questionnaire. All subjects were volunteers. For the most part, students were contacted through the Psychology Department subject pool. Because of difficulties recruiting senior students, questionnaires were mailed out to students in their third and fourth years at university. Only questionnaires with all items (exceptions are noted below) answered were included, resulting in 67 subjects being excluded due to missing data. Analysis was conducted using the remaining 267 subjects. The sample includes 132 females and 135 males. In total, there are 159 students in cooperative programs and 108 in regular programs in the sample. Subjects were enrolled in Arts (95 students), Science (74 students), and Math (98 students) faculties with a total of 60 in their first year, 73 in second year, 69 in third year, and 65 in fourth year.

Test Materials. The Student Adaptation to College Questionnaire, developed by Baker, R.W and Siryk, M. A was used to assess students' adjustment to their university experiences. Baker and Siryk (1989) believe that student adaptation is multifaceted, and thus developed a questionnaire which measures students' academic adjustment, social adjustment, personal adjustment, and attachment to their university. This self-report measure contains 67 items which are statements regarding university life that represent either positive or negative adaptation to university. Subjects indicate the extent that each statement applies to them using a nine point scale. For the purposes of the present study the questionnaire was renamed the Student Adaptation to University Questionnaire because in this location "college" denotes lower leveL non-degree granting institutions. While the entire questionnaire was presented to the subjects, two of the items were not included in the analysis since they did not apply to a very large number of subjects in this sample. The items that were omitted are: Q26 I enjoy living in a college donnitory and Q33 I am getting along very well with my roommates at college. These items were omitted from both the Total score and from subsequent subscale scores.

The questionnaire contains four subscales aimed at measuring different facets of adaptation to university: the Academic Adjustment subscale contains items referring to various educational demands, the Social Adjustment subscale contains items relevant to interpersonal demands, the Personal-Emotional Adjustment subscale evaluates the extent to which students are experiencing psychological distress or associated physical problems, and the Institutional Attachment subscale measures the quality of the relationship between the student and the institution. The questionnaire possesses satisfactory reliability, as is evidenced by coefficient alpha values in previous studies of .92 to .95 for the Total Score, .81 to .90 for the Academic Adjustment subscale, .83 to .91 for the Social Adjustment subscale, .77 to .86 for the Personal-Emotional subscale, and .85 to .91 for the Attachment subscale (Baker & Siryk, 1989). In the present study, coefficients (calculated on the 65-item scale as noted above) were obtained that fell within these ranges for all of the subscales except Attachment, which had an alpha coefficient of .79.

Results

A 2x3x4x2 Analysis of Variance (ANO VA) was conducted in order to examine the combined effects of Gender, Program of Study (Co-op, Regular), Faculty (Arts, Science, Math), and Year (1 through 4) on student adaptation. A full ANOVA analysis was considered appropriate since several factors are thought to play an important role in interpreting Program effects. Therefore, a full design which considers all of the possible effects simultaneously was employed in order to examine the unique effects associated with each of the factors and then assess the interactions with Program. Due to the size of the sample and the relatively large number of factors being considered, three-way interactions cannot be interpreted with confidence. The other significant findings were as follows.

There was a significant Program effect for the Total Adaptation score (F(l,221)=4.70, p= .031). Students enrolled in co-op programs reported higher scores than those in regular programs, thus demonstrating better adjustment to university life. In case this effect was due to differences at the time of entry to the program, a separate test was conducted in order to determine whether or not there were differences between co-op and regular students in first year with respect to Total Adaptation. No differences were found. Special contrasts were used to examine the unique effects of faculty of enrollment (Arts vs Science and Math), and year at university (comparing first year with later years). A significant main effect for Faculty (F(2,221) =6.08, p = .014) was found when the scores for students in the faculty of Arts were contrasted with those in Science and Math. Those students enrolled in Arts had higher scores, and thus better adaptation to university, than those students enrolled in the Science and Math faculties. Also, a main effect for Year (F(1,221)=7.00, p=.009) was Math faculties. Also, a main effect for Year (F(l,221)=7.00, p .009) was evident when students in first year were compared to those in second year where Total Adaptation scores were higher for second year students. It is worth noting, however, that contrasts between first year students and third and fourth year students were not significant. Further examination of the cell means indicates that those students in the second year, regular arts group seem to have very high scores in relation to the trends evident for the rest of the sample.

Table 1 contains the mean Total Adaptation score as a function of Faculty and Program and Year. Note that the cell means are generally higher for co-op students than for Regular students and that Arts students report higher Total Adaptation scores than those in Science and in Math. The mean Total Adaptation scores (corrected for the items not scored) for subjects enrolled in the faculty of Arts as well as those enrolled in co-op programs in Science and Math are similar to the mean scores reported for other college samples by the test authors (Baker & Siryk, 1989). The scores for those enrolled in regular programs in Science and Math are slightly lower than the previously reported means. With the exception of the Regular Arts group, the standard deviations for the groups are quite small in comparison to those that have been reported previously for this scale.

The four subscale scores were analyzed using a full factorial MANOVA (Program by Gender by Faculty by Year), since the subscale scores were correlated with each other. The correlations between the subscales range from r=.35 to r=.80. Higher inter-correlations were found between Social Adjustment and Attachment and between the Total score and subscale scores, and are likely due to the presence of shared items.

Main effects for Program were found for Social Adjustment (F(l,221)= 6.30, p=.013) and Attachment to University (Fl,221)= 4.92, p=.028). Students in co-op programs were better adjusted socially and had closer attachment to the university than did students in regular programs. In addition, a significant main effect for Year was found for Academic Adjustment (F(l,221)=14.72, p=.000) and for Personal Adjustment (F(1,221)=6.11, p=.014) when first year students were compared to second year students.

While these scores were higher for second year students it should be noted that this effect may be related to unusually high scores in the regular arts group. The interaction between Year and Program was not significant. Once again, a separate test was conducted in order to determine whether or not there were differences between co-op and regular students in first year with respect to the four adaptation subscales. A Gender by Faculty by Program ANOVA revealed that there were no differences between first year students in co-op and regular programs on the adaptation subscales.

While Gender did not interact with Program, a Gender by Year effect was significant for Academic Adjustment when first year students were compared to second year students (F(l,221)=7.79, p .006). Females in first year reported higher Academic Adjustment scores than males did, yet the scores are higher and very similar for males and females in second year.

Mean values for the four subscales as a function of Program and Year of study are reported in Table 2. Compared to the published values, the mean subscale scores and standard deviations for Personal Adjustment and Attachment to University (corrected for the two items not scored) are similar to those obtained elsewhere. The mean scores for subjects enrolled in the Regular program in Science on Social Adjustment and Academic Adjustment are lower than those that have been reported for these subscales while the means for the remaining test groups on these subscales fall within the expected range. The standard deviations for this sample are generally similar to those that have been previously reported although they tend to be slightly lower for the Social Adjustment and Attachment to University subscales.

Discussion

The results of the present study offer strong evidence for the beneficial effects of cooperative education on student adaptation to university life. Despite differences between faculties, co-op students consistently reported better adaptation, especially in the areas of social adjustment and attachment to university. High scores on the Social Adjustment subscale indicate greater success in social activities in general, more involvement with other people on campus, less difficulty in dealing with social relocation and separating from home ties, and greater satisfaction with the social aspects of the university environment. High scores on the Attachment subscale indicate a greater commitment to educational goals and a greater attachment to the institution in which the student is enrolled, and have been related to a lower likelihood of attrition. These results are also consistent with previous research which has revealed strong feelings of satisfaction among graduates for the cooperative program at Waterloo (Rowe, 1992). Despite the stresses and strains produced by following a co-op program, it is clear that these students have adjusted well to university life.

Wilson (1987) and Rowe (1989) have noted that initial differences between co-op and regular students may present serious confusion in cooperative education research. No differences were found between co­op and regular first year students, thus providing reassurance that overall differences between co-op and regular students were not a function of initial differences between the two groups. However, senior co-op students (in fourth year) tended to have higher scores than did regular students, thus suggesting that the co-op experience itself contributes to successful adaptation to university.

A major finding in this study is the significant Faculty effect: Arts students were better adapted to university life than were students in Mathematics and Science. While such differences are important in their own right, they are of particular importance for co-op researchers. It is clear that we need to control for the effects of faculty of registration (or more appropriately, perhaps, for the discipline or program) in any future research. Analyses also revealed that Year and Gender were related: females appeared to have an initial (first year) advantage in terms of Academic Adjustment which is not evident in second year. Again, this effect suggests the importance of controlling for gender differences when studying student adaptation and when assessing the effects of cooperative programs. The possibility, raised by Fletcher (1989), that various student characteristics might moderate the effects of co-op programs has been demonstrated in the present study.

In conclusion, then, this research confirms earlier reports based on less rigorously designed studies of personal development, in that co-op students were found to be better adapted to university life than were non­co-op students. Indeed, no evidence was found of the effect of the stress of co-op experiences and conflicting role demands noted by others. Nor is the adaptation of co-op students a function of preselection, since these differences do not exist at the first year level. How can we resolve the apparent contradiction of high stress in the lives of co-op students at the same time as they display superior adjustment to university? Fletcher (1989, 1990) has argued that the importance of co-op programs is that they provide students with opportunities for "mastery" which results in greater feelings of competency. Students have repeated events involving success or failure, and repeated experiences of evaluation. Even though these opportunities for mastery are almost by definition stressful, because the tasks are performed in somewhat protected, supervised environments, the chances of success are quite high. "Successful mastery experiences are those in which the individual uses skills, abilities, and coping strategies to perform the task at hand" (Fletcher, 1990, p.5). Thus co-op programs, at least for successful students, may increase self-esteem and self-confidence, and in this way lead to personal growth. On the basis of the present research, we would also add that these success experiences contribute to better adjustment in university.