Influence on College, Study Abroad Programs

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Introduction
This nonexperimental study is examining the influence on college, study abroad programs and the influence on “environmental citizenship,” (Tarrant & Lyons, 2012, p. 201) in undergraduate college students. The literature review provided adequate background and previous studies to support the purpose of this study. The literature review does lead to the clearly stated research purpose of “exploring the effect of previous study abroad experience, gender, and destination on pre- and post-levels of environmental citizenship, before and after participation in a short-term…travel program to Australia or New Zealand” (Tarrant & Lyons, p. 408). There were no research questions or hypotheses explicitly stated but can be easily inferred from the research purpose. There was no theory used to frame this study.
Methods
The demographics from this study identified these 651 participants from United States undergraduate colleges. The sample consisted of 68.3% females and 31.7% males. The researchers also further clarified percentages of students traveling to Australia (64.8%) and first time participating in a study abroad program (92.2%). There was no indication of ethnicity or nationality of students. There was also no indication of the geographic location of the participating 10 colleges. A convenience sample, utilizing volunteers was appropriate for the purpose of this study. There were enough participants in this study. Two-thirds of the sample were students traveling to Australia; that left the remaining participants traveling to New Zealand which was approximately 228 students. The research instruments differed both pre- and posttest. The pretest was a “7-item scale developed by Stern et al.” (p. 409) while the posttest was a...

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...d on the different perspectives of each program. Thus, examine New Zealand, examine Australia, and then run a t-test to determine if the results are statistical similar; then compare the New Zealand and Australia programs. Other limitations the authors outline are students previous international travel experience, the non-randomization as students chose travel destination, confounding teacher variables, and college learning modules. Future recommendations of the study offered by the authors include longitudinal research, destination choice as related to changing attitudes and behaviors, comparison of on-campus versus study abroad programs, and inclusion of qualitative research to studies.

Works Cited

Tarrant, M., & Lyons, K. (2012). The effect of short-term educational travel programs on environmental citizenship. Environmental Education Research, 18(3), 403-416.

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