Research Paper on the Loss of Motivation in College

Introduction

Getting into a new environment can be stressful for most college students. While being stressed is normal, the loss of motivation comes due to the lack of a strong support system for the learners. Adapting to a new environment requires the active engagement of parents and educators in the life of the student. According to a study done by Boduszek and Dhingra, low motivation is among the factors that could result in a student committing suicide. Hopelessness and the lack of coping mechanisms to deal with stress are some of the major problems that students face while in college. If poorly handled, they could negatively affect a student and their performance in college (Boduszek & Dhingra, 2016). The work below focuses on the methods used to relate the loss of motivation and students entering college.

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Participants

I will use a sample of 1500 students from 3 universities in New York. The participants will be aged 17 to 33 and in their undergraduate studies with a majority of them being White. Other participants will be Asian, Black and Caucasian to create a balance in ethnicity. The students will be from low-income, middle-level, and high-income households to ensure that there is an understanding of the factors that influence motivation. The target population will be conducted through radio announcements and school visits to ensure that there is a connection between the students and the researcher.

Materials

The materials that will be used for this investigation include the Little's Missing Completely at Random (MCAR) test and the Beck Hopelessness Scale which is at the scale of 20. The BHS test scores will reconcile the findings to ensure that they were statistically useful. The Responsive Styles Questionnaire (RSQ) will also be used to ensure that students can express what is stressing them on a scale of 5 to 20. To establish goal engagement and disengagement, the Goal Adjustment Scale (GAS) will be used to identify the difficulties that each student was facing. Other materials used include the Depressive Symptoms Index and a questionnaire to record the suicide attempts in case a student provides an affirmative answer on the Suicidality Subscale. These subscales will be accompanied by questionnaires which will be used to relate the statistics obtained with the findings.

Procedure

The study design will be cross-sectional to ensure that the data collected is analyzed by observation during the research period. It is useful since it allows comparison to take place. The design will also be correlational to ensure that the variables identified influence each other (Curtis, Comiskey & Dempsey, 2016). Hopelessness and empowerment are the two variables that will be used in this study. Empowerment is integral since it determines how much a student has control over their learning environment (Chittum, Jones & Carter, 2019). Hopelessness, on the other hand, results in learners lacking motivation and feeling insecure about their future.

Every individual will be treated as a separate entity and the data recorded shall be based on the information they provide at each step. The procedures employed to make sure that the data was collected systematically include the use of online surveys that were restricted to a single internet protocol address for each student. To eliminate bias, the participation was voluntary and the students filled in questionnaires without coercion. Control procedures for this study were the age of the participants which was restricted to a minimum of 17 and a maximum of 33 years. The age bracket is significant since it enables the collection of diverse experiences from people who have been in college and those who are already in college.

References

Boduszek, D., & Dhingra, K. (2016). Construct validity of the Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS) among university students: A multitrait-multimethod approach. Psychological Assessment, 28(10), 1325.

Chittum, J. R., Jones, B. D., & Carter, D. M. (2019). A person-centered investigation of patterns in college students' perceptions of motivation in a course. Learning and Individual Differences, 69, 94-107.

Curtis, E. A., Comiskey, C., & Dempsey, O. (2016). Importance and use of correlational research. Nurse Researcher, 23(6).