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Description:
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Students in United States higher education increasingly demonstrate nontraditional characteristics . These characteristics include being married , having dependents in the household , maintaining full -time employment , enrolling as a part -time student , and delaying entry into higher education from secondary education . Determining the impact of motivational tendencies of students on these nontraditional characteristics was the focus of this study .
Surveys of undergraduate students from three universities in the southern region of the United States provided data for demographic and nontraditional characteristics in conjunction with the Academic Motivation Scale (AMS -C28 ) to determine motivational tendencies . A discriminant function analysis was performed to measure whether motivational tendencies could classify students into risk categories (minimum risk being zero to one characteristic , moderate risk with two or three characteristics , and high risk exhibiting four or more characteristics ) based on nontraditional attributes . The findings of the analysis resulted in the rejection of the hypothesis in that motivation tendencies did not classify students into risk classifications based on nontraditional characteristics . However , the two functions of the discriminant analysis uncovered distinct behavioral patterns for moderate risk students and high risk students . Moderate risk students portrayed fewer tendencies to accept educational regulations while high risk students were less likely to have a freedom of choice to participate in educational processes . |