A parental attitudinal assessment as a basis for a school board public relations program

Grace, Thomas J. (1972) A parental attitudinal assessment as a basis for a school board public relations program. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

The objective of this research has been to provide the St. John's Roman Catholic School Board with an assessment of parental attitudes concerning the existing state of education within the schools under its jurisdiction so that the Board might begin to initiate a formal public relations program. In order to establish direction and guidelines for the program, this study endeavored to measure parental acceptance or rejection regarding various aspects of finance, discipline, curriculum, teacher image and the school board. To further facilitate the organization of the public relations program, the investigator has attempted, through the use of social variables, to locate those segments of the parent population which displayed strong negative responses on any of the items in the questionnaire. -- A Likert-type scale consisting of 50 items related to the five divisions of education outlined above was used to gauge parents' attitudes. Before the instrument was considered acceptable for use in the study, it underwent several informal examinations and was finally subjected to a test-retest reliability study. The questionnaire was then distributed to 200 students who had been selected at random from classlists provided by grade four teachers. Each student was given t\NO questionnaires to bring home and to return to the school. Of the 400 questionnaires administered, 331 were returned of which 307 formed the basis for the final analysis. -- Before the main analysis of the raw data, X analyses were completed to determine whether or not any significant interaction was prevalent among the social variables. Following this, each of the 50 items was subjected to a one-way analysis of variance for each of the social variables. When significant F ratios appeared, the means of that analysis were compared by the Newman-Keuls comparison of ordered means in order to ascertain where the significant difference existed. In addition to these analyses, Table X was constructed to show the percentage of responses for each position on the attitude scale for each item. The analyses for each item were then summarized in chapter five. -- The summary of all the analyses clearly indicated that there was a definite need for the St. John's Roman Catholic School Board to develop a public relations program which would establish methods by which parents would come to know, understand and respect the work of the Board in its efforts to improve the quality of education in the schools under its authority. This was the main recommendation of the study. Among the other recommendations of the study, it was suggested that the School Board examine its educational program with a view to changing the curriculum so that parents perceived the educational process as being relevant to the student's later life situation; that teachers be made aware of the role which good public relations plays in aiding them to succeed in their task, of educating youth and that the new School Board be cognizant of the high expectations held for them by parents.

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