| The purpose of this research was to explore the relationship of student persistence in a university with personal competency and perceived social support. Subjects consisted of a random sample of student persisters at a mid-size Rocky Mountain university and those who voluntarily withdrew from that university. Persistence was determined by whether the student remained at the university during the 1983 Fall semester (a persister), or voluntarily withdrew from the university during that same time period. Personal competency was measured by the Personal Competency Inventory (PCI) with subscales of Functional, Personal, Interpersonal, and Problem-Solving Skills; perceived social support was measured by scales of Perceived Social Support-Friends (PSS-Fr) and Perceived Social Support-Family (PSS-Fa).;Personal competency and perceived social support were selected as the predictor variables for the purpose of data analysis. Discriminant analysis was the statistical technique used to determine the magnitude of relationships and prediction of group membership among persisters and voluntary withdrawals.;The .05 level of significance was selected as the comparison value against which to judge computed differences and reach a decision for each hypothesis tested: in each instance, the results were not significant at the .05 level. Therefore, the overall conclusion was that group membership could not be successfully predicted for persisters or voluntary withdrawals with the variables of the PCI, PSS-Fr, and PSS-Fa, using multivariate discriminant analysis.;However, two of the subscales of the PCI, Personal and Problem-Solving Skills, were significant at .05 and .03, respectively. In addition, the total scale score for the PCI approached significance at .08. On the basis of these results, it is recommended that further research be conducted in the area of personal competency as related to the persistence and voluntary withdrawal of university students.;Copies of the PCI, PSS-Fr, and PSS-Fa were mailed to a random sample of 800 student persisters during the 1983 Fall semester. At the conclusion of the study, there were a total of 546 respondents equaling a 68 percent return rate. Each of the 165 students who voluntarily withdrew from the university during Fall, 1983, completed the PCI, PSS-Fr, and PSS-Fa prior to their exit interview with the Dean of Students Office. |
