The Impact of Demographic Variables on Professor’s Perceptions of Post-secondary Health Education Curricula

Abstract

The focus of this study was to examine the differences in health educators’ attitudes regarding the effectiveness of the current health education curriculum at predominately White institutions and minority-serving institutions. More specifically, the researchers were concerned with the influence of the variables age, ethnicity, gender, years of teaching experience, and institution type on the attitudes of health educators regarding the health curriculum at colleges, universities, and junior/community colleges in the southern region of Texas. The researchers formulated and tested 11 null hypotheses in this study. Each served to determine whether there was significant statistical difference in health educators’ attitudes. Part I of the Fisher Health Education Curriculum Attitude Survey, developed by the lead researcher, represents demographic information data that were used to obtain background information about the respondents (see Appendix 1). Part II of the Fisher Health Education Survey was used to determine health educators’ attitudes regarding the health education curriculum as it relates to students’ social and emotional needs (see Appendix 2). The researchers established content validity for the instrument as well as reliability. A population sample of 214 health educators who were randomly selected from 2-year and 4-year institutions were invited to participate in the survey. A total of 168 participants returned the surveys, which yielded a completion rate of 79 %.