CHANGING ATTITUDES OF UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS IN REGARD TO THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT

The Problem. This research proposed to determine the effects of an urban environmental instructional unit upon the environmental attitudes of undergraduate college students. The Hypothesis. The urban environmental attitudes of undergraduate college students who receive instruction according to an urban environmental studies unit, as identified within the context of the study, will differ significantly from those students who receive no urban environmental instruction. The Methodology. An urban environmental studies instructional unit was developed for this study. In addition, a preliminary attitude questionnaire was constructed and reviewed by a panel of jurors. A pilot study using the preliminary questionnaire was conducted and a statistical item analysis performed using the item responses of the students who participated in the pilot study. Twenty-two items from the preliminary questionnaire were selected for the final attitude questionnaire entitled Instrument For Determining Attitudes Toward the Urban Environment. The questionnaire was administered as a pretest and posttest to the experimental and control groups on the first and final day of the experimental time frame. An analysis of the students' gain scores (the difference between each students' pretest and posttest scores) was accomplished by the application of a one-way analysis of variance. An ancillary analysis of attitude changes for the experimental subjects was also completed by considering eight categories of affective statements. The gain scores (the difference between the pretest and posttest means) was the criterion for ranking the categories of affective statements. The Results and Conclusions. There was no statistical significance observed in the difference of the pretest scores for the experimental and control groups when tested at the alpha = 0.05 level. The research hypothesis was not rejected based upon the fact that there was statistical significance at the 0.0001 level. Positive mean gain scores were observed in every category of affective statements. The researcher concluded that the cognitive skills developed as a result of the urban environmental instructional program contributed to the experimental subjects' attitude change. Therefore, is is hoped that the subjects' behavior will be modified in the direction of influencing the alleviation and possibly the prevention of further deterioration of the urban environment.