The Structure of Student Interest in Computers and Information Technology: An Application of Facet Theory and Multidimensional Scaling

The present study addressed the question of whether computers and information technology constitute a uniform attitude object which can influence the study interests of students. Based on a facet design, an interest questionnaire with 72 university course descriptions was constructed in which computers and information technology was embedded as one of four item-design facets (Weinsier & Leutner, 1988). One hundred students from each of two universities responded to the questionnaire. The multidimensional interest structures of the two samples were nearly identical. The design facets constituted uniform attitude objects and the multidimensional scaling solution of the inter-item correlation matrix could be partitioned almost perfectly according to regional hypotheses derived from the facet design. Next to the discipline facet (i.e., academic discipline), computers and information technology constituted the most relevant facet of student interest. An analysis of variance supported the conclusions drawn from the multidimensional scalings.