BELIEFS ABOUT ENROLLING IN INTRODUCTORY GEOLOGY: AN APPLICATION OF THE THEORY OF PLANNED BEHAVIOR

The purpose of this study is to examine the beliefs of introductory college geology students about enrolling in that course at a large, research university using the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). The TPB posits that three sets of beliefs (attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral controls) drive intent to engage in a behavior, which, along with actual behavioral controls, drives engagement in that behavior, such as enrolling in a physical geology class.

A two-phase, qualitative-then-quantitative design was used to generate a set of accessible, modal beliefs about enrolling in an introductory geology course using open-ended questions (Phase I), then to develop and validate a close-ended survey with multiple scales (Phase II).

For Phase I, a nine-question survey that probed student attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral controls underwent two rounds of preliminary review: once by a student group to provide feedback in the design and length, and once by a panel of geoscientists to evaluate its credibility and relevance. An inductive content analysis was used to identify unique ideas within the 698 question responses. These in turn were used to create a set of 40 semantic differentials by TPB construct, using bipolar adjectives (e.g. easy/hard, useful/useless). In Phase II, 375 new physical geology students responded to this set of semantic differentials in the first 10 days of Spring 2020.

An exploratory factor analysis initially identified 25 of the original 40 items that met the loading criteria for a single scale. After removing non- and cross-loading items, a total of nine items loaded on two factors, explaining 57.49% of the cumulative variance. These two factors are 1) direct benefit and structural support (30.14% of variance) and 2) learning about the Earth (27.35% of the variance). Though internal consistency is not a requirement of salient belief composites, Chronbach's alpha for both scales were above .7, with all items contributing positively to their scale.

The BaSIC-Geo (Beliefs of Students in Introductory Courses - Geology) provides insights into the underlying cognitive foundations (beliefs) that explain why students enroll in a geology class. The strongest of these may be leveraged to recruit additional students to enroll in an introductory geology class.