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THE AFFECTIVE IMPACT OF FIELD EXPERIENCE EDUCATION ON COLLEGE STUDENTS G r e g o r y J. M c H u g o G. C h r i s t i a n J e r n s t e d t

ABSTRACT: Field experience education encompasses a wealth of undergraduate curricular opportunities, including cooperative education, internships, adventure learning, and study abroad. Studies of field experiences may be organized according to three stages of the experiential process: selection factors prior to the experience, immediate change due to the experience, and the persistence of change following the experience. Compared to traditional campus activities, field experiences appear to have some significant affective impact on college students. However, a knowledge of experimental design techniques makes obvious the need for a major revision of the manner in which field experiences have been evaluated.

Learner outcomes from an educational experience h a v e t r a d i t i o n a l l y b e e n t h o u g h t to occur a l o n g t h r e e d i m e n s i o n s : cognitive, affective, a n d p s y c h o m o t o r . H o w e v e r , t h e a t t e n t i o n of m o s t e x p e r i e n t i a l e d u c a t o r s , e s p e c i a l l y t h e C o n s o r t i u m for t h e A d v a n c e m e n t of E x p e r i e n t i a l L e a r n i n g (see for e x a m p l e , K e e t o n & Associates, 1976), h a s b e e n directed at t h e a s s e s s m e n t of cognitive i m p a c t . S a n f o r d (1962, 1967) a n d o t h e r s (e.g., C h i c k e r i n g , 1969; F r e e d m a n , 1968) h a v e a r g u e d t h a t s t u d e n t d e v e l o p m e n t should be t h e p r e e m i n e n t concern of h i g h e r education. C h i c k e r i n g (1976) r e v i e w e d s e v e r a l developmental theories and pointed out that the late adolescent-young a d u l t period is p a r t i c u l a r l y i m p o r t a n t in t h e m a t u r a t i o n a l process. G i v e n t h a t e x p e r i e n t i a l l e a r n i n g is a f e a t u r e of h i g h e r e d u c a t i o n t h a t t o d a y affects m a n y s t u d e n t s , it is i m p o r t a n t to assess t h e affective, n o n c o g n i t i v e i m p a c t of t h e s e p r o g r a m s . T h e p u r p o s e of t h i s p a p e r is to Gregory J. McHugo is a Ph.D candidate and Dr. G. Christian Jernstedt is on the faculty in the Department of Psychology, Dartmouth College. 188 Alternative Higher Education, Vol. 3(3), 1979 0361-6851/79/1300-0188500.95 ~) 1979 Human SciencesPress

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review the available evidence, seeking to integrate w h a t heretofore has been a fragmented literature. The focus wilt be on those programs which are available within the liberal arts curriculum as outlined and described by Duley (1974) and collectively named field experience education. Duley includes many internship programs, as well as the wilderness adventure programs which are emerging as experiential alternatives on college campuses. Several time-worn models, such as work-study (or cooperative education) and study abroad, are also considered field experience. Although these programs differ in time span, emphasis on formal instruction, reliance on group processes, and other structural features, they all engage the learner in an action setting outside the traditional classroom. All of these programs include among their goals for the student that of personal growth and development. METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS Investigators steeped in scientific method would be appalled at the quality of evaluation of the affective impact of field experience education on college students. Few studies contain adequate comparison groups and fewer provide appropriate follow-up data. Often the instruments used for program evaluation are locally constructed and have no reliability or validity data. In many cases there is no a p r i o r i theoretical justification for the instrument used or the information gathered. There is seldom cross-validation of the reported results, and the statistical analyses are often flawed. These observations need not be construed as condemnation of the investigators, since this research arena is fraught with methodological entanglements. Because random assignment of individuals to groups is unlikely in educational settings, the experimental designs are quasiexperimental at best, often rendering inferences unstable. This research realm is particularly susceptible to placebo, Hawthorne, and experimenter effects, as well as to other threats to both internal and external validity (Campbell & Stanley, 1966; Rosenthal & Rosnow, 1969). On the other hand, it must be noted that psychometric methods are imperfect; there is no assessment technique without its ardent critics. For example, the limitations of self-report measures have been detailed (Mischell, 1968), and the interview has been questioned as a valid source of objective and predictive information (Fisher, Epstein, & Harris, 1967). Matters are complicated further by cross-situational inconsistencies in behavior ( B e m & Allen, 1974) and by the limitations of self-knowledge (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977; Torbert, 1972).

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Beyond the problems of obtaining valid information are those relating to the statistical treatment of the data. The measurement of change is a thorny issue in research (e.g., Cronbach & Furby, 1970; Harris, 1963; Marks & Martin, 1973). Feldman and Newcomb (1969) discuss other analysis problems surrounding the assessment of impact, such as the clouding of individual change in reporting group data and the problems of inferring changes in maturity from changes in test scores. Several sophisticated methodologies have been proposed for the assessment of college impact (e.g., Astin, 1970; Feldman, 1969, 1971), but they are complex and beyond the scope of many investigators who are concerned with the impact of a local program. In summary, any design, any instrumentation, and any analysis in the area of impact research and evaluation is vulnerable to criticism. With this in mind, interest turns to the available information on the nature of the impact process itself. EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FOR IMPACT Feldman (1972) has reviewed the prevalent perspectives from which the impact of college is studied. A primary distinction is whether the focus is on the developing student or on the complex environment with which the student interacts. Astin (1977) likens the impact process to the medical model. The student comes forth as a result of certain selection factors which then interact with the treatment (the college experience) in determining the nature of the outcomes. Feldman and Newcomb (1969) use systems terminology, which describes the college as a reasonably stable and definable system through which flow its students (e.g., Astin, 1968; Centra, 1972). The students bring to the environment certain characteristics, called input, and eventually leave the environment having been influenced by the input-environment interaction, called output. Therefore, the research process associated with the assessment of impact involves minimally three stages: the selection factors among the constituent population, immediate outcomes due to the interaction of the program and the participants, and lastly, the transfer of change to the post-experience environment. The following three sections review the information relevant to each stage of this process. THE SELECTION PROCESS Research findings concerning the selection process are important in assessing the students' outcomes and in determining


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policy in such areas as recruitment, counseling and orientation, and program structure. To begin with, different types of students elect different colleges (e.g., Chickering, 1969; Clark, Heist, McConnell, Trow, & Yonge, 1972). Within single institutions, different students are attracted to different academic majors and to different living and peer groups (e.g., Feldman & Newcomb, 1969; Katz & Associates, 1968). These selection factors bear on the outcomes from the college experience. Kragness and Hendel (1978) showed that students choosing to enroll in an elected studies program are different from their university peers. This result supports Heist and Bilorusky (1970) and Newcomb and Associates (1970), who found that nontraditional students differ from traditional students on a variety of measures. Two large-scale studies provide the clearest evidence of the differences between undergraduates choosing field experience and those who remain on campus. Hull, Lemke, and Houang (Note 1) compared input differences among undergraduates from many institutions, who spent a period of the undergraduate years off campus in foreign and domestic placements, with undergraduates from the home campuses. The sojourners differed from the home-campus students in the distribution of academic major and in attendance at cultural events. The sojourners were more often from suburban rather than rural settings. The overseas program students were the least conservative in their non-political attitudes, while the domestic program students were the most likely to join political or social action groups. Both groups of off-campus students saw themselves as more tolerant of others than did the home-campus group. Students venturing off campus expected to be forced to question their values, to become involved with the local population and local problems, and to further their career preparation through the experience. Wilson (Note 2) compared cooperative to non-cooperative education students at the liberal arts college of an eastern university. The cooperative sample tended to be younger, to include more males and more local students, and to come from lower socio-economic classes. This social class distinction also was reported in a large survey of cooperative education by Wilson and Lyons (1961) and has important implications for the assessment of change due to work/study programs. These studies confirm that differences exist between students electing field experience programs and other undergraduates. The differences may be demographic, attitudinal, or derived from measures of personality. Apparently, students come with well-formed expectations that may or may not mesh with the goals of the program. Several studies from the literature on study abroad underscore the importance of these expectations. Gullahorn and Gullahorn (1958) showed that

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while students and institutions frequently list the same goals, it is the priority ordering which seems most useful in predicting outcomes from the experience. Coelho (1962) discussed the interplay of educational and personal development in the implementation of cross-cultural programs, stressing the importance of each in the education of the whole person. He argued for thorough orientation prior to the experience to facilitate the growth process. McEnvoy (1968a) made a similar argument from the perspective of a counselor, where adequate preparation can avert psychological casualties from a cross-cultural experience. Morgan (1975) similarly stressed student readiness as a prerequisite to cross-cultural experience and suggested on-site academic courses aimed at the adaptation and change process. In short, expectations play an important role as the student prepares to venture into a new experience. The more clearly these expectations and goals are articulated by both the student and the sponsoring institution and the more that this articulation process is bilateral and outcomeoriented, the better are the chances for the student's benefiting from the experience. Although self-selection brings certain students to field experience programs to the exclusion of others, these differences represent averages and in reality a variety of students come forth. There have been several reports which point to the relevance of input differences in the context of field experience education. Leonard (1964) and H. P. Smith (1955) concluded that outcomes of a cross-cultural experience are more predictable from knowledge of the individual's personality at the outset than from knowledge of the experience itself. Typologies m a y emerge, as they have in the literature on overall college impacts (e.g., Clark & Trow, 1966), in any attempt to discern patterns of input characteristics which collectively predict outcome. Morgan (1972) developed a typology of student adaptation based on numerous variables. He proposed that the "cultural relativist" is open to the experience and in a position to learn from it, whereas the "cultural opposite" tends to become closer to American peers and more nationalistic. Similarly, C. T. Smith (1970) classified certain students as "interactors" in describing their adaptation to the cross-cultural experience. They were more involved in discussion of issues with Americans and non-Americans, and they changed most as a result of the experience. Settings other than study abroad provide collaborative evidence for the salience of input differences. Borstelmann (Note 3) compared students of age 15-23 in an Outward Bound course with their instructors on measures of locus of control and values. Those students who were


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more similar to the instructors at the outset were rated as having had more successful experiences. Kolb and Fry (1975) described the assessment of individual learning style as a predictor of outcome in any learning situation. They categorized learners based on one's relative position along two dimensions: concrete experience/abstract conceptualization and reflective observation/active experimentation. They reported that learning style interacts with the structural features of a learning situation in determining outcomes, both cognitive and noncognitive. Selection factors, both those that determine which students will elect field experience and those that differentiate among the electees, are crucial to the understanding of the later impact of the experience. What students for field experience programs will become is intimately and inescapedly bound to what they are. Knowledge of who they are, why they came, and what they expect is invaluable in predicting and assessing how they will be changed. THE IMPACT PROCESS The second phase is the student's field experience itself, where student characteristics interact with the features of the program. New behaviors are called for, attitudes and values may be challenged, theory melds into practice and emerges from practice, and the self may coevolve in new directions. Assessment directly following the experience is aimed at understanding the changes that have taken place within the individual that are attributable to the experience. The college impact literature is replete with examples of assessment strategies and measured outcomes (e.g., Astin, 1977; Feldman & Newcomb, 1969). Field experience program impacts will be discussed along four assessment dimensions: attitudes, personality, behavior, and interpersonal competence.

Attitude change Attitude change is the more researched area of the affective domain within field experience education. Cross-cultural experiences are high in potential for modifying attitudes, due to the student's direct exposure to different attitudes, values, behaviors, lifestyles, and environments. Studies of attitude change from crosscultural experiences have centered around those attitudes which aggregate to form such variables as worldmindedness, ethnocentrism, and cosmopolitanism (e.g., Kafka, 1968; McEnvoy, 1968b).

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H. P. Smith (1955) tested several groups of young adults, mostly college students, to assess the impact of a European experience. A subset of the students was interviewed before and after the experience concerning their attitudes towards the target culture. The standardized tests showed no differences due to the experience on subscales measuring worldmindedness, ethnocentrism, authoritarianism, or conservatism, when compared to a s t a y - a t - h o m e comparison group. The interviews indicated significant changes in attitudes towards the host country and in perceptions about the similarity of the United States to the host country. The author concluded that brief crosscultural experiences are more likely to have impact upon specific attitudes, such as those tapped by the interviews, than upon deep-rooted attitudes measured by standardized instruments. Leonard (1964) investigated attitude change in college students who participated in a university's program of study abroad. The Lentz C-R Opinionaire was administered before and after the cross-cultural experience in an attempt to measure a predicted shift towards liberalization in basic attitudes and increased openness to new values. The results showed a significant change towards liberalism over the intertest interval. Because she did not include a comparison group, the author compared her results with a significant drop reported in previous research of freshman-senior differences due to college. This result extended earlier findings (Leonard, 1959) with a smaller group of students from the same program. These two studies did not indicate significant alterations in attitudes as a result of cross-cultural experiences. Several other studies that used standardized assessment instruments failed to find significant differences in attitudes or values attributable to study abroad (Kafka, 1968; Morgan, 1972). The authors of these reports and reviewers of these data (e.g., Hull & Lemke, 1975) frequently invoked methodological shortcomings as being responsible for the lack of systematic results. More recent, comprehensive studies do find numerous significant differences. Hull et al. (Note 1) reported two sets of outcome data from their study of off-campus programs. The first was the responses of all students who completed the Individual Opinion Inventory (IOI) after their sojourn or as m e m b e r s of the home-campus comparison group. Off-campus students, in both overseas and domestic programs, reported more involvement in the local area and local problems than did students at the home campuses. The sojourners were more certain that they could characterize the local population's attitudes and values. The students involved in domestic programs reported that the experience contributed to their vocational plans. Domestic program students were


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more certain that the experience had forced them to examine their personal values than were the overseas program or home-campus students. Whereas all groups felt more confident in coping beyond college, the domestic program group reported the most change, followed by the overseas group, and then the home-campus group. The second set of outcome data presented in this study was from those matched pairs of students who completed the IOI prior to and immediately following the off-campus experience, compared to the home-campus group. The results paralleled those described above. Again, domestic program students reported the most change, with the overseas students intermediate, and the home-campus students reporting least change. Many of the changes reported by the domestic program students reflected the social involvement built into these programs, coupled with the selection differences between these students and the other two groups. Both groups of students who spent time off campus reported greater understanding of other cultures and increased tolerance of others. Hull et al. concluded that individuals change in a variety of settings where initial individual differences, motivation, and change experiences are more important than location itself. Domestic and overseas programs were judged to be valuable in furthering student development through their emphasis on experience in a novel environment. These conclusions bolstered earlier results of an intensive interview study of randomly selected students at overseas and domestic sites (Hull, Lemke, & Houang, Note 4). Students frequently reported change as a result of their experience. Nevertheless, few statistically significant differences emerged between the specific programs investigated. The recurrent conclusion is that cultural difference is an educational catalyst independent in large part of geographical location or a program's curricular structure. To evaluate student outcomes due to cooperative education, Wilson (Note 2) reduced the cooperative versus non-cooperative student groups into work versus non-work groups. The cooperative work experience could then become the basis for comparison. In self-perceived change, more work students gained personal insight, formulated career plans, and developed political views, while more non-work students reported changes in academic orientation and skills. Wilson reported that, overall, the cooperative students were much like their non-cooperative peers in attitudes and values. The differences centered around the emphasis on careers versus academics. Work students seemed more realistic and more cautious in expressing their attitudes. While they tended to be positive on a particular attitude, they were

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less likely to be extreme in their view and, hence, emerged as more conservative. The work experience was considered to have tempered the idealism of the students, making them more practical in outlook. However, one must not lose sight of the input differences between cooperative and non-cooperative students when examining this conclusion. The career emphasis at the expense of academic interests, the restraint in expressing their attitudes, and the tendency towards less authoritarianism, leave one hesitant to generalize about the impact of cooperative education. The process is obviously complex, confounded by selection differences and statistical oversimplification. Several evaluation studies have been published detailing changes in attitudes and the benefits derived from service-learning programs, particularly in the southern parts of the United States (Gordon, Note 5; Kiel, Note 6). Students returned from summer-long internships more motivated towards working in community service. Their attitudes about public need were moved towards greater understanding and concern. They reported enhanced knowledge of their personal abilities and improved problem solving skills. These students emerged with changed attitudes about traditional college curricula, public officials, social and economic problems, and service-oriented occupations. In summary, field experience has potential for attitude change among college students, but this conclusion is offered with reservation. Earlier studies using standardized instruments generally failed to find differences. More recent studies have shown differences using interviews, open-ended questionnaires, or newly constructed inventories. Most authors agree that students who venture off campus do not differ greatly in their attitudes and values after their experience from their home-campus counterparts but differences do emerge, they are significant, and they are often in expected directions.

Personality change Several studies of personality change have been conducted in the area of field experience~ These data differ from the attitude data principally in the nature of the assessment instruments used, although many of the earlier studies noted above used subscales from standardized personality inventories to measure variables related to shifts in attitudes. McGuigan (1958) compared Hollins College students who spent a year studying and traveling in France to their peers who remained on the home campus. A variety of standardized assessment instruments was administered before, during, and after the study abroad experi-

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ence. Both groups changed appreciably, yet differential change on a particular measure was rare enough to cause the author to conclude that personality change from intercultural experience is limited. McGuigan reported that students who participated in the study abroad program developed higher social values and more submissive social adjustment, with the latter tending to reverse itself as the experience ended. More recently, Nash (1976) compared students in a Junior-Yearin-France program to students from the home campus. Nash administered a personality questionnaire containing open-ended items and standardized subscales, both before and after the field experience. Students returned from a year's study abroad were more autonomous and had developed a more expanded or differentiated sense of self. This sense of self seemed to reflect the acculturation process, as the students reported changes making them more ¢~Frenchlike" (one example being less alienation from their bodies). At the same time, they returned from France with less favorable attitudes concerning the host culture. Hypotheses about increases in tolerance and flexibility were not confirmed, but there was a significant trend towards more liberalized political views among the overseas group. Nash also reported a significant decline in self-confidence among the overseas students as compared to the home students. He explained this negative change as due to the number of students who, to participate in the study abroad program, left behind boy- or girlfriends. The juxtaposition of these two studies of personality changes in students involved in cross-cultural programs accentuates again the discrepancies in the literature on field experiences; older studies fail to find differences and newer studies succeed. Two reports are available concerning the impact on personality of an outdoor adventure/survival program. Heaps and Thorstenson (1974) studied self-concept changes in a small group of program participants. They found positive changes on nearly all subscales of the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale when comparing posttest to pretest scores. These results were confirmed with a larger sample in a more complex experimental design (Robbins, 1976). Here Robbins obtained positive changes on the subscales of the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale, indicating a more favorably integrated personality configuration for those students who participated in the wilderness experience. These two studies indicate that an intense, short duration (30 days) experience can alter self-concept among college students. Related to these results are m a n y studies reporting the impact on young adults of outdoor programs, primarily those programs using an Outward Bound design.

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Few programs involve only college students or are affiliated directly with colleges, so their findings are only tangentially relevant here. Shore (Note 7) compiled and summarized the Outward Bound literature and concluded that evidence for changes in self-concept among young adults was frequent, but not reliable across studies. From those investigators who specifically assessed personality dimensions, as opposed to attitudes and values, comes the guarded conclusion that field experience programs can affect personality in significant ways. A field experience within the undergraduate years may provide fertile maturational ground for seeding personality change beyond that attributable to the college experience itself.

Behavioral change There is, regretably, little evidence for behavioral change concomitant with the attitude and personality changes noted above. Hull et al. (Note 1) reported that domestic program students attended more concerts and cultural events than overseas program students, who in turn attended more such events than home-campus students. Home-campus students felt that they studied harder during the preceding year, while students off campus reported having studied less. This finding is common in programs of study abroad (cf. Morgan, 1975). Domestic program students reported having read more material concerning the local area than did the overseas students, while home-campus students reported virtually no comparable reading. Both field experience groups reported having spent considerably more time with members of the local community than was reported by their on-campus peers. Wilson's (Note 2) cooperative and non-cooperative student groups provided frequency data about a set of activities; 7 of the 16 comparisons were significantly different. Five of the activities referred to intellectual and cultural pursuits, and the differences favored the nonwork students. Also, more non-work students broke rules for the fun of it, and more work students attended spectator sports. Students then completed a checklist of 44 activities, on which only five differences reached significance. Again, non-work students reported more intellectual and cultural activity. More work students reported discussions concerning state, national, and international affairs. For both groups the freshman to senior trend was towards more interest in national and international affairs and less involvement in church and formal religion. In summary, it is the more recent and more comprehensive studies that have assessed behavioral change, and they have found differences


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congruent with their interpretations of attitude and personality change. The data are student self-reports, however, so conclusions regarding behavior change due to field experience are tentative.

Interpersonal competence The same paucity of results exists in the area of change in interpersonal competence. This is an area of affective growth that is often cited in connection with field experience education. It can be studied separately because techniques have been developed specifically to assess interpersonal competence (Breen, Donlon, & Whitaker, Note 8). Wogan, Chinsky, and Schoeplein (1971) described the development process among several groups of urban interns. Although they concluded that the students were affected by their experience, no formal evaluation was conducted to assess gains in interpersonal competencies. James (1976) asked students who had returned from studying abroad if they thought that the experience had improved their ability to relate to other people. The students claimed this to be the most significant impact of the experience, in particular citing improved relations with other students and members of the host culture. In the context of research on college impacts Katz and Associates (1968) questioned students, who had studied abroad, about their experience. Students regularly reported that one of the most important aspects of their experience abroad had been the opportunity to establish meaningful relationships with members of both sexes. These established friendships persisted once the students returned home. Girault (1964), studying the same program, reported that while only 16 percent of the students bound for the overseas campus indicated establishing friendships as an anticipated outcome, 66 percent listed this as an outcome when questioned 6 months after return, and 80 percent listed friendships as an outcome when questioned 18 months later. Both groups of students (cooperative and non-cooperative) in Wilson's study (Note 2) showed improved social skills over the college years, but the groups did not differ in their gains on this measure. Work students did report a decline over the undergraduate years in their interest in working with and helping other people, accompanied by less interest in making large sums of money, when asked to rate characteristics of their ideal job. This is interpreted as the result of increased realism among the work students due to their immersion in the adult world of work. Such, then, is the state of research concerning improved interper-

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sonal competence and social skills among students in field experience programs. The data collected to date have not addressed the issue squarely and, other than through student reports, these skills have gone unassessed.

Summary Are students changed in measurable ways by field experience programs? The answer seems to be a guarded yes. The data provide moderate support for attitude and personality change, but any conclusion is tied to the strings of methodological complications and treat them singly. The earlier studies relied more often on treat them singly. The earlier studies relied more often on psychometrically derived instruments and, by default, narrower theoretical perspectives. The more recent find differences; the earlier often did not. As for impact on behavior or interpersonal skills, the data are absent for the most part. The more recent studies that document behavioral change have failed to include follow-up data which allow assessment of the true impact of the field experience on subsequent behavior. Students behave differently while on sojourn, but that alone does not constitute impact. There are reports of increased social activity, but no adequate assessments of interpersonal competence to substantiate the students' claims.

THE TRANSFER PROCESS This section concerns the maintenance of change, that is, the transfer of new learning to the post-experience environment. This is perhaps the most important question for researchers when seeking to evaluate any educational endeavor and one that is under-researched. Along many attitudinal and personality dimensions students often show no changes beyond their senior year in college (Newcomb, Koenig, Flacks, & Warwick, 1967). However, the literature does reveal that changes can persist beyond college (e.g., Feldman & Newcomb, 1969). Hoose (Note 9) questioned former service-learning interns and concluded that program impacts do persist. Over half of the respondents were involved in public service jobs when surveyed. They reported that their internships had taught them how to learn from experience and had fostered the development of new skills and values. Follow-up data are available in the aforementioned research reports


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of the impact of an outdoor survival program. Heaps and Thorstenson (1974) found the changes in self-concept, as measured by the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale, to be stable after one year. Subjective reports revealed initial declines in psychological and social functioning, followed by periods of improvement. The result was long-term maintenance of the changes which were noted immediately following the experience. Robbins (1976) continued to follow these results in his research. He found that students had difficulty readjusting to the campus world after the experience, especially as they tried to hold closely to the positive feelings that they brought back with them. Robbins also noted that difficulty with reentry was correlated with scores on the posttests of several instruments and concluded that higher scorers have less difficulty. The literature on study abroad provides further evidence for the problems of transfer. H. P. Smith (1955) noted that an incubation period following cross-cultural experience may be necessary for changes in worldmindedness and other social attitudes to surface. This suggestion was based on informal follow-up data from students returned for one and three years, as compared to recent returnees. H. P. Smith (1957) then conducted a 4Vz year follow-up of the original students and, while he found changes in the study abroad students, he also found similar changes in the comparison group. The author thus added this failure, to find long-run impact due to the intercultural experience, to his original lack of short-run differences. Billigmeier and Forman (1975) sought retrospective assessment of a study abroad program in Germany. Reflecting on their experiences of six years earlier, the respondents referred to the maturational benefits of having to fend for themselves. They also reported becoming more aware of intercultural differences and intellectual and cultural traditions. More than half of these former students reported changes in values resulting from their close association with German students, faculty, and families. McGuigan (1958) followed one set of students by testing them as seniors, 16 months after their experience abroad, but high attrition in both the overseas and comparison groups makes any conclusions tentative. There were no significant differences within the overseas group between posttest and follow-up, but the on-campus group showed several significant changes in personality. Finally, Nash (1976) provided some follow-up data, cautioning that subject attrition caused inferential difficulties. He found that the personality changes discovered on the posttest did not persist to the follow-up given about three months later. There seemed to be a con-

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tinued decline in self-confidence, complicating his conclusion that the pretest to posttest difference had been the result of separation from loved ones. The lowered alienation from one's body discovered at the time of the posttest was maintained in the follow-up. Nash compared his failure to find permanent change to that of McGuigan, although each used different instruments and assessed different personality dimensions. Taken together, these results leave one uncertain about the transfer of change to the post-experience environment. Each study mentioned did find evidence for maintenance of some of the changes wrought by field experience, but each study also found evidence of erosion and instability of change. If students change in field experience settings, the likelihood of those changes persisting and being maintained upon reentry to the stable college environment seems variable at best. It is safe to conclude from the data that some changes persist and others do not, and to proceed to understand the processes by which such determinations are made.

CONCLUSIONS Evaluations of field experience education are limited by many methodological problems. Often these problems arise because the use of rigorous experimental methods would have required modifications in the actual experience itself. On the other hand, investigators of field experience education often have not made use of reasonable, possible, and even simple procedures of sound experimental design. Good monographs on experimental design in education are readily available (e.g., Campbell & Stanley, 1966). Field experience education is far too important in the lives of students to leave to the vagaries of naive evaluation. Though there is not a body of strong, clear research findings on field experience education, there are patterns in the presently available information. Dividing field experiences into the three phases of selection, immediate impact, and long-term transfer can provide meaningful insights into this type of education. Selection factors prescribe who will enter field experience programs and what affective characteristics they will bring with them. The ultimate impact of the experiences is intimately linked to some of these selection factors. Once students have been selected for field experience programs, the outcomes are determined in part by the program characteristics and by

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the interaction between the program and selection factors. Programs can significantly influence attitudes, personality, behavior, and interpersonal competence. Recent, more methodologically appropriate studies reveal more change in students of these programs than do earlier studies. Whether or not changes in students which existed at the close of their association with a field experience program are maintained beyond the time of the experience is unclear. Evidence exists for the persistence of some of these changes. However, there is much more changes may have begun to occur at the end of the experience and yet not be strong enough to be detected at that time. These ~%leepereffects" may be quite important; their existence has yet to be well examined. Field experience education is ripe for careful study. Methodological and statistical techniques are available. Those involved with field experience programs have strong feelings about their effectiveness. The current literature is encouraging in providing empirical support for some of these feelings. Much work remains to be done.

REFERENCE NOTES 1. Hull, W. F., IV, Lemke, W. H., Jr., & Houang, R. T. The American undergraduate, off-campus and overseas: A study of the educational validity of such programs. New York: Council on International Educational Exchange, Occasional Paper No. 20, January 1977. 2. Wilson, J. W. Impact of cooperative education upon personal development and growth of values. Boston: Northeastern University, 1974. 3. Borstlemann, L. J. Psychological readiness for and change associated with the Outward Bound Program. Morganton, North Carolina: North Carolina Outward Bound School, 1969. 4. Hull, W. F., IV, Lemke, W. H., Jr., & Houang, R. T. Students in sojourn:An intensive interview study of American undergraduates on off-campus study programs in the United States and overseas. U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Office of Education, International Studies Branch, October 1975. 5. Gordon, W. J. An examination of attitudinal changes in SREB interns: Summers 1968-1970. In Service Learning in the South. Atlanta: Southern Regional Education Board, 1973. 6. Kiel, D. H. Student learning through community involvement. Atlanta: Southern Regional Education Board, 1972. 7. Shore, A. Outward Bound: A reference volume. Greenwich, Connecticut: Outward Bound Inc., 1977. 8. Breen, P., Donlon, T. F., & Whitaker, U. Teaching and assessing interpersonal competence--a CAEL handbook. Cooperative Assessment of Experiential Learning, 1977. 9. Hoose, H. Service-learning internships, a look at the influence of service-learning internships on 56 students. Raleigh, N.C.: North Carolina Internship Office, 1973.

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