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Browsing by Author "Halsey-Hunter, Deborah J."

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    Factors Inhibiting Completion of a Program of Study at a West Virginia Community and Technical College
    Belcher, Diane Louise (Virginia Tech, 2020-03-31)
    This study was conducted to identify personal and institutional barriers preventing community college students from completing their education goals, whether that was a degree program, diploma program, or credentialing program. It was also conducted to identify strategies that can be used to assist these students in overcoming these barriers. The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experiences of students at one West Virginia Community and Technical College who dropped out of their programs of study. The study sought to identify actions and events that contributed to students choosing to drop out and strategies that can be used to reduce their dropping out. Understanding the students' perspectives concerning their decisions to drop out will assist community college personnel to evaluate the on- and off-campus factors influencing these decisions. This qualitative study sought to directly ask students about their personal lives and also about the people and events on campus that influenced their decision to drop out of Thompson Community and Technical College (pseudonym). The study contains three major research questions: What personal factors contributed to students dropping out of one West Virginia Community and Technical College? What institutional factors contributed to students dropping out of one West Virginia Community and Technical College? What strategies can one West Virginia Community and Technical College implement to enhance student retention and decrease student dropout rates? The basic qualitative research design of conducting one-on-one qualitative interviews was used for this study. Criterion and purposeful sampling were utilized to identify participants. Semi-structured interviewing and document reviewing was utilized to gather data to discover rich information from the participants' lived experiences. Participants were suggested by current or former faculty or staff members at one of the West Virginia Community and Technical College campuses in the state of West Virginia. They were students who had already attended for at least one semester and who had subsequently dropped out of their programs of study. Fifteen participants were interviewed for the study.
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    Predictors of performance on the Certified Professional Secretaries Examination
    Halsey-Hunter, Deborah J. (Virginia Tech, 1996-05-22)
    The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which scores on the Certified Professional Secretaries® Examination could be predicted by selected education, work experience, test preparation, and demographic variables. A secondary purpose was to develop descriptive profiles of candidates who passed and who failed to pass on their first attempt on the new three-part CPS® Examination. The independent variable categories were education, work experience, test preparation, and demographics of professional associations, work status, and salary. The dependent variables were the scores on the three parts of the May 1995 CPS® Examination. The sample in the study consisted of 300 randomly selected examination candidates, 150 from the pass group and 150 from the fail group, of the May 1995 CPS® Examination. Data were collected by having Professional Secretaries International® mail a questionnaire to the candidates to ensure anonymity. After three questionnaire mailings and a postcard follow up, seventy-nine percent (79%) of the questionnaires were returned. Data analyses were completed by using both descriptive and regression statistics. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the sample and revealed some striking similarities between the pass and fail groups. Regression analyses were used to examine ability of the variables selected for inclusion in this study to predicting performance on the Certified Professional Secretaries® (CPS®) Examination. The extensive regression analyses on the nationally representative sample of candidates included in the present study, however, revealed only limited statistical significance in the final equations. It was therefore concluded that based on these findings, the selected variables do not have practical utility for predicting future performance on the CPS® Examination.