Theses and Dissertations

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Gadke, Daniel L.

Committee Member

Morse, David T.

Committee Member

Stratton, Kasee K.

Committee Member

Justice, Cheryl A.

Date of Degree

8-11-2017

Document Type

Dissertation - Open Access

Major

Educational Psychology

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D)

College

College of Education

Department

Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology and Foundations

Abstract

With the increase of students with disabilities attending post secondary education, it is important to have an understanding of how satisfied a student with a disability is with college. At present, the research on college satisfaction focuses on specific variables and how the specific variables moderate or mediate college satisfaction; however, there is limited research in the area of college satisfaction and students with disabilities. To address the current gap in research, the purpose of the current study was to address if there was a difference in overall satisfaction in students with a disability compared to students without a disability. Further, analysis of group differences in relation to domain scores was conducted, and how variables such as entrance status, gender, ethnicity, ACT scores, and grade point average mediate college satisfaction for students with disabilities. Additionally, it was important to examine the relationship between disability status and overall satisfaction, as well as examine the relationship of the 4 domains (e.g. Instruction and Life Skills, Quality of Student Services, and Quality of Undergraduate Experience) and overall satisfaction. Survey data were collected from 2009-2014 Undergraduate Survey from the Office of Institutional Research and Effectiveness at a university in the southeastern United States. The results indicated a statistically significant difference between students with disabilities and students without disabilities in regards to perceptions of services provided, and undergraduate experience. Specifically, individual with disabilities are more satisfied in the area of services provided compared to students without disabilities, while students without disabilities are more satisfied with their undergraduate experience compared to students with disabilities. Further, numerous relationships were found between variables such as gender, ethnicity, entrance status, academic proficiency, and overall satisfaction. Lastly, instructional and life skills, quality of student services, quality of academic advising, and quality of undergraduate experience scores load onto the latent variable of overall satisfaction as hypothesized.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/19309

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