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THE URBAN OR RURAL BACKGROUND OF FIRST‐YEAR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN RELATION TO THEIR ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE *
Author(s) -
DALE R. R.,
MILLER P. M.
Publication year - 1972
Publication title -
british journal of educational psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.557
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 2044-8279
pISSN - 0007-0998
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8279.1972.tb00708.x
Subject(s) - rural area , demography , the arts , psychology , welsh , limiting , population , geography , mathematics education , sociology , socioeconomics , medicine , political science , mechanical engineering , archaeology , engineering , pathology , law
S ummary . The association of the urban/rural variable with university academic performance was assessed by a matched pair procedure. Variables matched were sex, co‐educational/single‐sex school, examining board (W.J.E.C. only), Arts/Science faculties, and (for A‐level) number of subjects taken, best subject, average grade and number of attempts. Social class was mostly matched but partly balanced. Student pairs were selected from a three‐year entry to Welsh University Colleges, with first‐year results unknown. A comparison of urban (over 16,000 population) versus rural, produced little difference between the matched samples, except that the urban Arts students from single‐sex schools did better than their rural counterparts. Limiting urban to cities over 100,000 while still opposing this to rural (under 16,000) increased the differences, so that in four separate matched samples namely, city co‐educated Arts versus rural co‐educated Arts, city co‐educated Science versus rural co‐educated Science, and similarly for single‐sex schools, the city students had the better first‐year performance, statistically highly significant for the combined samples. Students from intermediate sized towns in all groups performed less well than those from both city and rural schools, producing a curvilinear relationship between performance and the urban/rural variable.