Developing Purpose Vector33. A random sample of 20 third-year students, 20 fourth-year students and 20 graduate students was drawn from the student record system. International students were excluded from the sample because it was felt that considerations regarding visas, immigration and sponsorship, while extremely important, were outside the parameters of this study, and therefore would potentially complicate analysis. All sixty potential participants received an invitation to participate in a 90-minute focus group. A followup email was sent to the same group four days after the original request went out, and a total of 28 students responded to the request for participants. Three focus groups were held, one for third-year students, one for fourth-year students and one for graduate students. The decision to conduct separate focus groups, based upon year of study, was taken to enable an exploration of participants‘ shared attitudes and experiences through the lens of their year of study; this assumed that students in different years are at different stages in their career development, and have different needs, experiences and observations. Graduate students, and students in fourth year, are closest to the career stepping-off point, when they leave the classroom and enter the labour market. This can have a significant impact upon their motivation for action (Jacobs and Newstead 2000), sometimes described as exit velocity, referring to a return to motivated work and superior performance. For students in third year, that time of egress may remain somewhat distant. The focus groups were audio-taped and then transcribed. Thematic analysis of the data was conducted to develop items and categories for the broader quantitative and qualitative, web-based questionnaire. Following analysis of the information generated by focus groups, one hundred and thirty-eight questionnaire items were created. The questionnaire was administered to a random sample of 2,500 third-year, fourth-year and graduate students via a webbased tool34. Survey items included Likert-scale questions and open-ended, qualitative questions. Nine hundred and fourteen students participated in the survey, representing a 37% response rate. Overall, the survey drew on a diverse group of students, although this diversity was not evenly distributed (see for example Table 1). Table 2 Survey Participant Characteristics Gender Men Women Disability Yes No Household Status
Citizenship Canadian Citizen Permanent Resident Other Race Black Chinese
206 523 841 57
33
736 21 0 3 68
Developing Purpose is Chickering‘s sixth of seven vectors of student development. In this stage of student development Chickering proposes that students are learning to develop their career goals, personal aspirations and commitments. 3434 The survey tool used in this study was StudentVoice (see ca.studentvoice.com).
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