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This exploratory study focused upon persisters and nonpersisters in a graduate level, nontraditional, liberal education program. Five demographic factors proved to be significant: age, type of Bachelor's degree held, years between completion of the Bachelor's Degree and enrollment in the Master's degree program, distance from Masters degree program site, and the social science score on the Undergraduate Assessment Program Test. Three areas of personal variables also were examined: purposes, personality traits and abilities, and instructional preferences. Significantly different responses were obtained from the two groups on one purpose statement, but none from the personality traits and abilities or instructional preference. Significant findings and trends are discussed. Canonical discriminant analysis is used to determine the most parsimonious combination of variables in explaining the variance between persisters and nonpersisters.
Langenbach et al. (Thu,) studied this question.