| The purpose of this study was to develop an instrument to assist in defining relationship rapport that occurs between agriculture students and their agricultural education teachers in the secondary school setting. The study utilized a quantitative and a qualitative approach in exploring relationship rapport in the secondary setting. An instrument was developed using rapport-type statements from three reliable instruments. The instrument developed in this study was entitled the Relationship Rapport Scale. The study focused on administering the Relationship Rapport Scale to secondary agriculture students in the state of Missouri ( N = 277). In addition to students completing a Likert-type scale, students also responded to open-ended statements by describing the relationship they had with their agriculture teacher. Internal consistency was generated and resulted in a Spearman Brown reliability estimate of .89 and a Cronbach's alpha estimate of .86. It can be concluded that measures of reliability calculated on the instrument suggest that it is an accurate inventory for providing a foundation to assist in defining relationship rapport between students and teachers.;This study also concluded that the relationship rapport instrument includes one underlying construct that assists in defining relationship rapport occurring between secondary agriculture students and their teachers. Using exploratory factor analysis, the one construct, consisting of 16 items (r = .93), has been entitled Interpersonal Closeness. Interpersonal closeness includes teacher characteristics such as: warmth, sincerity, genuine, honesty, respect, kindness, caring, comfortable, accepting, and communicative. The qualitative analysis portion of the study, which focused on students' written comments, also emulated the concepts that were found in the construct of Interpersonal Closeness. This construct is a key finding in this study because it has surfaced important characteristics that assist in defining and describing relationship rapport between secondary agriculture students and their teachers. |
