Search
Search Results
-
Purpose The purpose of this study was two fold: 1) to determine the self concepts of women workers and their relationship to certain personal variables and patterns of work, and 2) to produce basic self ...
Citation Citation
- Title:
- Self concepts of gainfully employed women in two colleges in Washington State
- Author:
- Westrum, Helen J.
Purpose The purpose of this study was two fold: 1) to determine the self concepts of women workers and their relationship to certain personal variables and patterns of work, and 2) to produce basic self concept research. Procedures The subjects selected for this study were the women employed in 1973 at Eastern Washington State College and Central Washington State College. Eastern employed 302 women and Central employed 282 women for a total of 583 subjects. The women worked at a variety of occupations in two different work settings. The women's occupations fell into three major divisions; professional, clerical and service workers. Each student was sent a data gathering packet that consisted of a cover letter, personal data sheet, instruction sheet, Tennessee Self Concept Scale booklet, score sheet and self-addressed-stamped envelope. Of the packets distributed, 378 were useable. The data from the personal data sheets were put on code sheets. The TSCS was mailed to Counselor Recordings and Tests, Nashville, Tennessee for scoring. When the computer print-outs were returned to the researcher, the T scores were matched with the personal data information. The data were then processed by programmed computer to determine if there were significant differences in the marital status, job classification, total length of time worked, length of time held in present position, age and education of the women workers. The data were then processed by programmed calculator and mean scores, as well as the one-way analysis of variance, were determined. Conclusions The statistical findings of this research project offers the following conclusions: 1. Marriage makes a significant difference in the self concepts of the group of working women studied. Married women had the highest self concept scores. Single women had the lowest scores. Divorced or separated women had scores higher than single women. Marriage, even if it was unsuccessful, produced higher self concept scores among the group of women studied. 2. The length of time a woman worked at her present position was directly related to her self concept score. The longer she worked, the more likely her score on the TSCS would be higher. 3. The TSCS mean scores in all the categories, under each hypothesis, showed that the respondents were above the norm of 50. This showed that the group had a positive self concept. Implications In view of the findings and conclusions of this study, the following implications were drawn: 1. Marital status was the most influential factor in forming self concepts of the women studied. Schools and other social institutions would help strengthen the self concepts of all women by encouraging women to think of themselves as individually valuable married or not married. 2. The longer a woman held her present position the better her self concept became. This knowledge would be valuable to all women, as well as employers. It would mean that women who worked in the same position over a long period of time would have the confidence needed for upward job mobility. Persons with a high self concept handle stress better and that would make them more qualified for advancement.
-
82. [Article] Influences of tillage system, climate, and soils on the demand for topsoil in northcentral Oregon wheat production
Soil erosion research in the fields of agronomy, soils science and mechanics, agricultural engineering, hydrology, climatology, and other scientific disciplines has economic dimensions. In general, measurable ...Citation Citation
- Title:
- Influences of tillage system, climate, and soils on the demand for topsoil in northcentral Oregon wheat production
- Author:
- Hanrahan, Michael S.
Soil erosion research in the fields of agronomy, soils science and mechanics, agricultural engineering, hydrology, climatology, and other scientific disciplines has economic dimensions. In general, measurable and, at times, significant economic effects are associated with the effects of erosion in the other disciplines. Interactions between climate, soils, hydrology, and tillage practices are incorporated into a stochastic simulation model that considers twenty six combinations of five tillage systems, three initial soil depths, two soil associations, two slope classes, and two annual precipitation levels over one hundred years. The model endogeneously determines stochastic annual soil loss. Yield is a function of varying soil depth and technological advance. The model maximizes the wheat producer's objective, 100-year discounted quasi-rents from wheat production. Cumulative or total rent distributions that derive from alternative tillage systems in the different ecological circumstances are compared under stochastic dominance. In low rainfall, shallow soil areas, annual tillage systems were preferred to fallow ones, while conservation tillage dominated plow tillage. In high rainfall areas, for either shallow or deep soil, conservation tillage dominated plow tillage, while plow tillage dominated no-till. Manipulation of the tillage-associated rent distributions permitted the estimation of value-of-marginal product or willingness to pay curves (ordinary, profit-maximizing, input demand curves) that express the depth of soil as a function of its economic worth. Properties of these curves are discussed. Comparison of expected total returns and marginal returns to topsoil increments under alternative tillage systems in defined ecological circumstances paralleled the stochastic dominance results. Rankings of tillage systems by expected total returns differed between ecological areas and differed from rankings by marginal returns. Regardless of tillage system or ecological circumstances, the economic worth of each added soil increment diminished. The experiment showed that differential rates of soil loss associated with different tillage systems influence the decision to continue using or to initially invest in alternative tillages, and also influence the economically rational wheat producer's willingness to incur costs associated with soil conservation. Total and marginal rents associated with single tillages were found to vary greatly across ecological circumstances. The ability and the willingness to invest in soil conservation were somewhat divorced. This result has significance for soil conservation targeting.
-
83. [Article] Rural ceramic production, consumption, and exchange in late classic Oaxaca, Mexico : a view from Yaasuchi
The Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico was home to one of the most intensively-studied archaic states in the New World. Centered at the hilltop city of Monte Albán, the Zapotec State first arose around 500 BC and ...Citation Citation
- Title:
- Rural ceramic production, consumption, and exchange in late classic Oaxaca, Mexico : a view from Yaasuchi
- Author:
- Pink, Jeremias
The Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico was home to one of the most intensively-studied archaic states in the New World. Centered at the hilltop city of Monte Albán, the Zapotec State first arose around 500 BC and eventually encompassed much of the present-day state of Oaxaca. But by the Late Classic (AD 550 - 850), the state began to dissolve from a regional power into a series of autonomous city-states. The organization of the Zapotec economy in the centuries preceding state decline has been alternatively characterized as a state administered system or a commercial market economy, but most work hinges upon a continued assumption of mutual dependence between rural agricultural producers and urban manufacturers of craft goods. Yet little empirical research has focused on the economic behavior of households in rural communities. To address these assumptions, over 300 archaeological ceramics from the rural site of Yaasuchi were submitted for compositional analysis using INAA at the OSU Archaeometry Laboratory in order to establish provenance. These ceramics were drawn from two Late Classic domestic structures, a ceramic-production firing feature, and surface collections taken throughout the site. Together, they provide insight into patterns of production, consumption, and exchange at a small, rural community in Monte Albán’s hinterland. Comparisons of these data to compositional information from a large database of clays and ceramics from throughout the region show that as much as 90% of Yaasuchi ceramics were produced on site and exchanged between households. Of the remaining 10%, one third were produced in communities near Monte Albán while the remainder came from sources closer to Yaasuchi. These results suggest that Yaasuchi households were not dependent on exchange in urban centers for access to ceramics. Nor however, were they divorced from the regional economy. Rather, households employed a range of economic strategies to fulfil domestic needs, including craft production for intra-site and regional exchange. I argue that this pattern of economic behavior is consistent with a view of the Late Classic economy in which the growing autonomy of sub-regional polities resulted in an incompletely integrated, overlapping market network. The structure of this exchange system would have impacted the reliability of markets as both a source of goods and income, discouraging rural participation in regional exchange.
-
84. [Article] "We Were Privileged in Oregon": Jessie Laird Brodie and Reproductive Politics, Locally and Transnationally, 1915-1975
This thesis conveys the history of reproductive politics in Oregon through the life of Dr. Jessie Laird Brodie (1898-1990). Brodie was a key figure in this history from the 1930's until the 1970's, mainly ...Citation Citation
- Title:
- "We Were Privileged in Oregon": Jessie Laird Brodie and Reproductive Politics, Locally and Transnationally, 1915-1975
- Author:
- Adams, Sadie Anne
- Year:
- 2012
This thesis conveys the history of reproductive politics in Oregon through the life of Dr. Jessie Laird Brodie (1898-1990). Brodie was a key figure in this history from the 1930's until the 1970's, mainly through the establishment of family planning programs through social and medical channels in Oregon and throughout Latin America. Oregon's reproductive legislation walked a fine line between conservatism and progressivism, but in general supported reproductive healthcare as a whole in comparison to the rest of the United States and Latin America. The state passed controversial contraceptive legislation in 1935 that benefited public health, but also passed eugenic laws, specifically a 1938 marriage bill, that attempted to limit specific population's reproductive control. By the time family planning was solidly rooted in the national and international sociopolitical discourse in the 1960's, due to the advent of the "pill," population control rhetoric, and the Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) Supreme Court decision, eugenic laws were virtually obsolete. Portland's history suggests that leaders in local reproductive politics sought to appeal to a diverse clientele but were restricted to the confines of federal funding mandates, specifically the war on poverty, that were fueled by postwar liberalism in an increasingly global age. The first chapter concentrates on the history of women's health and reproduction in Oregon prior to the 1960's. Dr. Jessie Laird Brodie's experiences with families in poverty during medical school in the 1920's disheartened her and motivated her to seek ways for these women to efficiently and affordably access birth control information. In response to public health concerns, she helped get positive contraception legislation passed in Oregon in the 1930's that set guidelines and restrictions for manufacture of contraceptives. This law was the first of its kind in the country and set a precedent for other states to follow. Brodie also supported a marriage bill in the 1930's that mandated premarital syphilis and psychological testing, in the hopes that it would lead couples to seek contraceptive, or "hygienic," advice from their physicians as efforts to establish a birth control clinic had failed up to this point. The second chapter focuses on Brodie's continued involvement in Oregon in the 1940's and 1950's, a period marked by a high tide of pronatalism in the U.S., and how she took Oregon's vision for women to a national and international level. Locally, she was involved with the E.C. Brown Trust, an organization dedicated to sex education, and was the President for the Pacific Northwest Conference on Family Relations, a group focused on the postwar family adjustments of higher divorce rates and juvenile delinquency. In 1947, Brodie was one of the founding members of the Pan-American Medical Women's Alliance, an organization created to provide a professional arena for women physicians throughout the Americas to discuss problems specific to women and children. Involvement with these groups helped her gain recognition nationally and in the late 1950's she served as President, and then Executive Director, of the American Medical Women's Association. Lastly, the third chapter looks at the establishment and growth of Planned Parenthood Association of Oregon (PPAO) in the 1960's under Brodie's leadership and her foray into the international establishment of family planning programs through the Boston-based Pathfinder Fund, an organization whose mission involved bringing effective reproductive healthcare to developing countries. Brodie acted as Executive Director for PPAO, where she was able to use her medical expertise and connections to bring the new organization credibility and respect throughout Oregon that they lacked before her involvement because the board was mainly comprised of a younger generation on the brink of second-wave feminism and the sexual revolution. In her career with Pathfinder she assessed the needs for family planning in Latin American and Caribbean countries and facilitated the establishment of programs in the region, largely in cooperation with the U.S. federal government and the Population Council. The conclusion offers a brief history of Dr. Brodie's continued involvement in the local and international communities beyond 1975 and the awards she received highlighting her career in the battle for effective healthcare for all women. In short, this thesis argues that legal and rights-based contestations that were prevalent in other regions of the U.S. and throughout the world were not characteristic of Oregon, allowing Brodie and PPAO to bring birth control to the state with relatively limited opposition.
-
In this dissertation, I explore how women and men in later life experience the world of dating and the pursuit of new intimate relationships. Although the mortality gap between women and men at older ages ...
Citation Citation
- Title:
- Theorizing age and gender in the pursuit of love in late life
- Author:
- Levaro, Elizabeth Bayler
In this dissertation, I explore how women and men in later life experience the world of dating and the pursuit of new intimate relationships. Although the mortality gap between women and men at older ages is narrowing, as they enter their 70s, 80s, and 90s, there are still at least two unmarried women for every unmarried man. This gender imbalance is due to women's greater longevity and cultural norms based in gender relations that underlie men's preference for younger partners at all ages--and, throughout most of their lives, women's preference for older partners. Viewing the pursuit of new intimate relationships as embedded within intersecting systems of age and gender inequality, my goal was to explore how unmarried heterosexual women and men negotiate the world of dating in late life and how they view themselves and each other as aging men and women. This research focuses on White heterosexual women and men 70 years of age and older who were actively pursuing new dating relationships through personal newspaper ads and Internet dating and matching sites. Positioning the search for new intimate partners within the intersection of age relations and gender relations, I addressed two research questions. First, I sought to understand how unmarried—widowed, divorced, or always single—heterosexual women and men age 70 and older who are actively pursuing new intimate relationships view and describe their experience of the world of late-life dating, their place in it as aging men and women, and the dating partners they encounter. Second, I examined how, as men and women in aging bodies in a culture that devalues both old age and old people, they maintain, negotiate, or construct their sense of manhood and masculinity or womanhood and femininity in the context of dating, romance, and sexual intimacy. This dissertation consists of two studies, both grounded in a constructivist/interpretive paradigm and the thematic analysis of in-depth, semistructured interviews with 24 informants (11 women and 13 men) between the ages of 70 and 92. In the first study, using an intersectional framework of age relations and gender relations, I examined how internalized negative stereotypes of aging in general and one's own aging, in particular, shape the ways in which old men and women position themselves for finding romantic partners and how they manage identity to make themselves attractive romantic partners in an ageist society. Through their personal ads, Internet profiles, posted pictures, and within the interviews themselves, I found that informants both maintained and subverted age and gender expectations. They consistently resisted a self-identity as old by invoking claims and affirmations of neither looking nor acting their chronological age. Simultaneously, they communicated admonitions to potential dating partners that they should not look or act old. Both the men and the women were seeking new romantic partners younger than themselves, with the men's mean lower age 21 years younger and the women's, 10 years younger. In the second study, also grounded in considerations of age relations and gender relations, I examined informants' orientations to sexual activity and the importance of sex in their dating lives. Findings showed that, contrary to ageist stereotypes depicting old people as asexual and earlier research findings that older adults might settle for alternate intimate activities, the majority of the women and men in this study expressed interest in an intimate relationship that includes sex, and most interpreted this to mean penetrative intercourse. Nearly all of the men were sexually active with younger partners, with over half either using or holding samples of drugs for the treatment of erectile dysfunction (ED). A far smaller percentage of the women were currently dating or sexually active, and none had experience with partners who required the functional assistance of ED drugs. In conclusion, the informants present a picture of late-life dating in which individuals both consciously and unconsciously submit to, resist, and sometimes defy the structural constraints presented by societal ageism, age relations, and gender relations. The intersecting systems of inequality and oppression that impact these women and men as they pursue new love may seem only to privilege old men, offering them, for instance, advantage in terms of more lenience in showing their age and a broader age range in which to pursue dating partners. As a group, however, the women expressed more satisfaction with their lives and were less driven by the desire for an intimate partner, relishing the independence and autonomy their unattached status allowed them.
-
86. [Article] Analysis of selected factors relating to the Neighborhood Youth Corps program in rural counties of Oregon
Purpose of the Study There were two major purposes of this study. The first was to determine which socio-economic and educational factors normally available to Neighborhood Youth Corps personnel were associated ...Citation Citation
- Title:
- Analysis of selected factors relating to the Neighborhood Youth Corps program in rural counties of Oregon
- Author:
- Bigsby, Robert Alexander
Purpose of the Study There were two major purposes of this study. The first was to determine which socio-economic and educational factors normally available to Neighborhood Youth Corps personnel were associated with success and failure in the out-of-school program. The second purpose was to utilize these available socio-economic and educational factors identified as success or failure determiners to construct a mathematical success-failure prediction equation. Procedures Data for 302 enrollees were obtained through a random sampling of terminated out-of-school enrollees. Socio-economic information was extracted from enrollee application forms and files. Educational information was obtained from the last school attended. Stepwise multiple linear regression and classification analyses were performed on data to identify variables contributing most significantly to success or failure. For these analyses, data for enrollees were grouped by marital status, sex, and age. Analyses were performed on separated groups. Variables contributing most significantly to success and failure were utilized to construct an equation for success-failure prediction. Selected Findings 1. A higher proportion of females succeeded in the out-of-school program than did males. Forty-five and one tenth percent of the females succeeded compared to 26.9 percent of the males. 2. Factors affecting success or failure of male enrollees were (a) Enrollee age. Sixteen-year-old male enrollees failed in the program at a rate approximately four times that of older enrollees. (b) Number of siblings in enrollee's family. Male enrollees coming from families with four or more children succeed at a higher rate than enrollees with one, two, or three children. "Only children" failed at a substantially higher rate than others. (c) Highest school grade completed. There was a steady decrease in the failure rate of male enrollees as school grade completed increased. (d) Head of household employment. Single male enrollees living in homes in which the head of household worked part time succeeded at over twice the rate of those living in homes with the head of household working full time. This group also succeeded at a higher rate than those from homes in which the head of household was not working at all. 3. Factors affecting success or failure of female enrollees were: (a) Language spoken in the home. Enrollees speaking Spanish in the home succeeded at a substantially higher rate than those speaking English. (b) Social assistance. Single female enrollees whose families accepted cash welfare payments succeeded at a lower rate than those whose families did not accept welfare. (c) Stated lifetime occupational goal. Single female enrollees stating a skilled lifetime occupational goal succeeded at a higher rate than those stating other lifetime goals. Those stating no lifetime goal or a professional goal failed at a substantially higher rate than others. (d) Family living group. Single female enrollees living with their mothers only succeeded at less than one-half the rate of those living with both parents. (e) Reason for leaving school. Female enrollees who left school for disciplinary reasons failed at a very high rate. (f) Enrollee age. Sixteen-year-old female enrollees tended not to succeed at as high a rate as 17, 18, 19, and 20 year-olds. 4. Accurate prediction of both success and failure was not possible for male enrollees and married or divorced females, 5. It was possible to correctly predict success and failure in the program of single female enrollees approximately 75 percent of the time by employing five socio-economic factors. 6. An equation was developed for predicting success or failure of single female enrollees. The following factors were employed in this prediction: (a) language spoken in home, (b) family living group, (c) reason for leaving school, (d) welfare, (e) lifetime occupational goal.
-
The purpose of this study was to present the new women's studies program for the community college. The study advocated consciousness raising for females at all levels of public instruction, but this paper ...
Citation Citation
- Title:
- Women's studies : a new program for the community college
- Author:
- Goltra, Raylene Denise
The purpose of this study was to present the new women's studies program for the community college. The study advocated consciousness raising for females at all levels of public instruction, but this paper was limited to the community college. The program outlined would seek to help women to assume a more equal position in American society. The initial phase of the study sought to prove that women are second class citizens in America. For example: women hold none of the presidencies in the top 100 United States business firms. There are no, women governors, nor attorney generals in all the 50 states, In addition, state legislatures across the country comprise approximately 7,000 positions. Only 300 of these positions are held by women. On the federal level, the Senate is an all-male club. In the House of Representatives only Edith Greene of Oregon holds any really important committee power. In the working world, women in blue collar positions face grave problems of overt discrimination, They are often paid less, denied advancement, refused maternity leaves, and are usually the last hired and the first fired. In the professional world, women have made scant headway in the last 30 years. In medicine, fewer women are accepted now than in the 1920's. In the legal profession, upward mobility is almost nil. Barely one percent of all the nation's judges are women. In education, women are abundant on the teaching staffs in, elementary and secondary schools. However, they are rarely promoted to the principal level. Women are also well represented on community college teaching staffs, but almost never rise to upper echelon administrative positions, In higher education, the problem is even more severe. Women encounter blatant discrimination in graduate school, the first pre-requisite to higher education teaching and administration, The number of women holding associate and full professorships in American universities are almost non-existent, Some of the sociological effects of "keeping women in their place" can be seen in the rising rates of females involved in: child abuse, drug usage, desertion, divorce, and suicide. Another major problem is that the number of families headed by women continues to grow. Many of these families exist in poverty. The second phase of the study explored the traditional areas of societal leadership, to ascertain what they were doing to alter these conditions. The groups under investigation were all the major Christian denominations and Judaism. Next studied were labor unions with 30 percent or more female members. Professional and fraternal organizations were also queried. It was concluded that none of these organizations had any structured plan to alter the existing situation for women. The writer then accepted the proposition that the greatest existing societal change agent was the public school system, specifically for this study, the community college. The final phase of the study concerned a detailed plan for the aforementioned new program. Several existing community college women's programs were profiled. Their relative strengths and weaknesses were explored. The major flaw noted in many of these programs was their insistance upon separatism, a "women only" policy, The program envisioned in this paper decries the concept of separatism. Its guiding principle is the creation of greater understanding between people. All classes would comprise both male and female students. Women can hope to alter their position in society very little if they exclude men from this kind of program. The latter group needs to gain more sensitivity to the problem, not increased hostility, which would be the result of exclusion. This new program would be under a Special Programs Director who would also be responsible for courses aimed at others with societal problems such as: ethnic minorities, the handicapped, and the aged. Interaction of all these groups with each other and the rest of the student body would be stressed. The program would offer women awareness courses, vocational training, job placement, group therapy, community activity, and competent, low cost, child care. Finally, the study endeavored to prove that the program could be initiated on almost any campus using the existing facilities and, in many cases, existing personnel.
-
88. [Article] An empirical study of the problem of attrition of students of first-year accounting in Oregon community colleges
The study was conducted in order to learn of the extent to which attrition exists among students enrolled in the first-year accounting course in Oregon community colleges, the factors tending to contribute to ...Citation Citation
- Title:
- An empirical study of the problem of attrition of students of first-year accounting in Oregon community colleges
- Author:
- Schultz, Alan R.
The study was conducted in order to learn of the extent to which attrition exists among students enrolled in the first-year accounting course in Oregon community colleges, the factors tending to contribute to the problem, and the approaches which might be used to help alleviate the problem. The design of the study consisted of two parts. The first part of the study was to gather information about the teaching philosophies and practices of the accounting faculties, and the number of students enrolled in and completing the three-terms of first-year accounting during the college years 1970-1972 at the eleven community colleges offering the course throughout the state. These same students were also analyzed by age, sex, marital status, high school background, major, military background, class (freshman/sophomore), and courseload. The second part of the investigation consisted of a two-year controlled study of the students at Linn-Benton Community College in Albany, Oregon, who had enrolled in the first term of the three-term sequence of first-year accounting in the fall of 1970 (the control year) and those who had enrolled in the first term of the three-term sequence in the fall of 1971 (the experimental group). In this study the day classes of the control year were compared to the day classes of the experimental year, while the evening classes of the control year were compared to the evening classes of the experimental year. The purpose of this latter study was to determine if two types of personalized attention (mandatory individual counseling and voluntary accounting "help" sessions) given to all classes in the experimental year would (1) allow more of these students to complete the three-term accounting sequence, and (2) allow more of these students to score significantly higher on the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants' (AICPA) Achievement Test, Level I, Form E-S. To insure that all students of both years entering the first-term of accounting were equal in accounting aptitude, the AICPA Orientation Test, Form B, Revised, was given. The results of the findings indicate that the accounting instructors (1) did not have adequate background information about (a) the student's reading and comprehension level, (b) how the student viewed himself as a scholar, and (c) the student's level of interest in accounting at the time he entered; (2) agreed on (a) informing the students early in the course of the value of accounting, (b) building the student's self-confidence, (c) building their own self-confidence, (d) reviewing solutions to homework in class, (e) providing the students with the best text available, and (f) using all input available to improve their instruction; (3) tended to prefer grouping accounting students (although this was not the case at the time); (4) continued to use the lecture method of instruction exclusively; (5) offered a wide variety of informal opportunities to personalize the learning of accounting by the availability of office hours, individual counseling, and one-to-one and group "help" sessions; (6) have avoided offering more formal opportunities for personalizing the subject matter by seldom using programmed texts and filmstrips, and workbooks and/or practice sets with keys, and audio and video tapes; (7) felt that personalizing the subject matter (a) helped to enhance student interest, (b) helped to enhance student learning, (c) helped encourage more students to complete each term (as well as the three-term sequence), (d) helped the instructor to better understand why some students have certain learning difficulties, (e) encouraged more instructors to more carefully organize their materials, and (f) encouraged more instructors to evaluate their methods of instruction. Additional findings of the study indicate that the average community college in Oregon had only 30% of all students enrolled in the first-year accounting course complete the three-term sequence. In addition, only 32% of all students required to have at least three terms of first-year accounting completed the sequence, and likewise only 24% of all students required to have at least one term of accounting completed all three terms of the sequence. In the metropolitan Portland area only 23% of all students, regardless of major, completed the three-term sequence. An analysis of the personal characteristics of these same students indicates, that a larger percentage of the students completing the sequence tended to be (a) male, (b) age 31 or older, (c) married, (d) high school graduates, (e) veterans, (f) sophomores, (g) part-time students, and (h) accounting majors. Students tending to be less successful were (a) female, (b) age 19-21, (c) divorced, separated, or widowed, (d) without either a high school diploma or GED certificate, (e) non-veterans, (f) freshmen, (g) full-time students, and (h) college transfer secretarial science majors. The results of the controlled study at Linn-Benton Community College indicate that even when students enrolled in the first-year accounting course are required to counsel individually with their instructor at the beginning of each term of the three-term sequence and are given the opportunity to attend voluntary accounting "help" sessions, they will probably (a) seldom attend the "help" sessions, (b) not score significantly higher on the AICPA Achievement Test, or (c) be more likely to complete the three-term sequence than those students not having had these two types of personalized attention provided to them. These observations led to the conclusion that a communication gap seems to exist between the instructor and the students. To help correct the problem a battery of tests was recommended, including the AICPA Orientation Test, the Minnesota Multiphasic Inventory Test, and the Strong Vocational Interest Blank, in order to better understand the background of incoming students. These tests could then be used in conjunction with the recommended mandatory individual counseling sessions at the beginning of each term along with mandatory laboratory sessions throughout the term. In addition, it was also recommended that pre-tests be given at the beginning of each term to help the instructor better plan his presentations for those areas where students indicated the most need. The AICPA Orientation Test, Form B, Revised, was concluded to be a valid test by which to measure the degree of success the student could expect upon completion of the three-term accounting sequence. The results of the study at Linn-Benton Community College also indicate that the students who had enrolled in the evening classes had a wide range of abilities and aptitudes from one year to the next. In conclusion it appears that personalized attention in its present form at Linn-Benton Community College is not effective in guaranteeing the successful completion of the three-term sequence of first-year accounting. Additional research may still have to be made into the motivational makeup of individual students.