| College administrators and faculty members are facing financial cutbacks and must justify program offerings; however, the problem is administrators and faculty members do not understand what information sources students rely upon when choosing courses and the influence of these resources on students' decision-making processes. By understanding information source factors such as usage frequency, influence, and reliability, faculty members may develop effective marketing strategies to promote their courses while taking advantage of word-of-mouth communications. The purpose of this quantitative, nonparametric analysis of variance design study was to discover the usage frequency, influence, and reliability of 4 information sources: (a) academic advisors, (b) parents, (c) peers, and (d) RateMyProfessors.comRTM. To understand the role of these information sources, 467 students at a Midwestern college were recruited to take an electronic survey, resulting in 281 completed surveys and a response rate of 60.17%. Respondents rated the factors of usage frequency, influence, and reliability for the 4 information sources on 5-point Likert-type scales. The null hypotheses were rejected, as Kruskal-Wallis tests indicated statistically-significant differences among the 4 information sources for each of the 3 factors: usage frequency (H= 447.486, df = 3, p < .001), influence (H= 477.075, df = 3, p < .001), and reliability (H = 375.212, df = 3, p < .001). All pairwise comparisons of the 4 information sources were found to be statistically significant for each of the 3 factors at the .05 level of significance through Mann-Whitney tests and Spearman correlations. Family-wise Type I error was controlled for all tests with a modified Bonferroni procedure. Academic advisors were found to be the most frequently used, most influential, and most reliable sources, followed by peers, parents, and RateMyProfessors.comRTM on all 3 factors. These findings supported the media richness theory that states equivocal situations require richer media sources. Researchers could expand upon findings by exploring whether these results are present at other colleges, investigating differences between genders, and analyzing the role of information sources in other consumption situations. College administrators and faculty members may use the results of this study to improve program recruitment efforts through better marketing strategies. |
