Characteristics differentiating school districts with community education programs /

Abstract

The independent variable, whether the school district had a community education program or not, was used to do a multiple comparison on the twenty-four dependent variables which had been grouped into five categories, one category for each of the hypothesis tested. The principle analysis consisted of a two-tailed t test to determine if differences exist between the two different groups of school districts. Statistical significance was set at the .05 confidence level.

A survey instrument was developed to gather data from which to draw conclusions from the five stated hypotheses. After revisions were made, based on recommendations of community educators, the instrument was mailed to 106 school district superintendents in Oklahoma. The school districts selected were divided into two groups: the 53 Oklahoma districts which had community education programs in 1982-83 and 53 Oklahoma school districts which were randomly selected from a list of non-community education school districts which had been previously grouped by size and geographic location. The instrument consisted of twenty-three questions. There were 106 surveys returned for a 100 percent response.

The purpose of this study was to determine the characteristics that differentiate school districts in Oklahoma which had community education programs from districts which did not.

Results of the tests indicated that there was a difference between school districts which had community education programs and those which did not as measured on coded scores for each of the five sets of variables identified for this study. All five of the null hypotheses were rejected and alternative hypotheses were accepted. While the findings of this study led to the conclusions that these were characteristics which differentiated Oklahoma school districts which had community education programs from those which did not, the investigator recommended additional studies for further research.