Identifying the Preferred Sources and Options of Help Seeking
Open Access
Author:
Reeves, Philip M
Graduate Program:
Educational Psychology
Degree:
Master of Science
Document Type:
Master Thesis
Date of Defense:
October 04, 2012
Committee Members:
Rayne Audrey Sperling, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Keywords:
Help Seeking Motivation Self-Regulation
Abstract:
Students in modern post-secondary school classroom environments have the choice of several help seeking sources to choose from (the professor, teaching assistant, or classmates) as well a choice of several different options to seek help with (email, discussion board, in class, before class, during office hours, or during online office hours). Providing the least threatening sources and options of help to students should increase help seeking behavior and subsequent achievement levels. This study examines how help seeking threat and possessing adaptive and avoidant help seeking tendencies predicts a self-reported preference for utilizing different help sources and options. Students in two sections of an introductory college class were provided with a 105 item survey that measured adaptive help seeking tendencies, avoidant help seeking tendencies, perceived help seeking threat, and perceived intention to seek help using the different options and sources of help that were available to them. Results from several correlation analyses indicate that avoidant help seekers are less adverse to online help seeking options, and adaptive help seekers intend to utilize all sources and options more than avoidant help seekers.