Graduate Program

Clinical Psychology

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Semester of Degree Completion

1977

Thesis Director

William M. Hillner

Abstract

The effect of a reward or reinforcement on behavior is contingent upon whether the person perceives the reward as dependent upon his own behavior or as independent from it. This perception has been termed locus of control orientation. The present study examined the relationship between the locus of control orientation of the student and the locus of control orientation of the instructor on a faculty evaluation form. An individual possessing an external locus of control orientation believes that reinforcement is the result of luck, chance, fate, or under the control of powerful others. An individual possessing an internal locus of control orientation beleives that reinforcement is the result of his personal action or attributes.

Two descriptions of instructors were written so that each possessed either an internal or external locus of control orientation. The internal instructor used an instructional method called the Keller Personalized System for Instruction (PSI). This system permits the student to control his own reinforcement by allowing him to take a number of short quizzes which are immediately graded by tutors providing rapid feedback on performance. The student proceeds at his own rate in the course and is allowed to retake all tests until his desired level of competency is obtained. The external instructor used a traditional instructional method in which lectures were presented and the students were evaluated by a midterm and a final examination. In order to determine whether the descriptions of the two instructors presented the locus of control orientation desired, they were rated by faculty members and graduate students on a continuum. A Mann Whitney-U test comparing the ratings received by the internal and external instructors showed a difference which was significant at the a = .05 level (U = 0, n1 = 11, n2 = 11, two-tailed test).

Hypotheses tested were: (a) faculty ratings given by internal control students will be higher than those given by external control students, (b) the internal instructor will receive an overall rating higher than the external instructor, (c) there will be an interaction effect between the locus of control orientation of the instructor and the locus of control orientation of the student.

Rotter's Internal--External Scale was administered to 93 undergraduates enrolled in psychology courses at Eastern Illinois University. The students were presented the descriptions of the two instructors in a counterbalanced order. Thus, one half of the students read and rated the internal instructor followed by the external instructor. The other half read and rated the external instructor followed by the internal instructor. Both instructors were rated on 20 identical items chosen from the 200 item list of the Purdue Cafeteria System. In addition, each student predicted what grade he would expect to receive from each instructor.

A split-plot analysis of variance for unweighted means showed that the hypotheses were not supported. Locus of control was not related to the ratings given by the students (F = .16938, dF = 1/91), nor to the ratings received by the instructors (F = 3.13627, dF = 1/91), nor did an interaction effect occur (F = .4952, dF = 1/91). However, the results did indicate that students in general expect to receive higher grades from a internal instructor (t = 4.24, dF = 100, p = .05 for externals; t = 2.90, dF = 82, p = .05 for internals). In addition, internal students predicted that they would receive higher grades overall than did external students. The mean expected grade reported by internal students was 1.33, while the mean expected grade reported by external students was 1.73. These mean grades were computed from a scale on which a grade of A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, D = 4, F = 5. The results were concluded to be inconsistent with past research concerning the locus of control construct and rating systems.

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