Determinants of student's learning case study in macroeconomics at the university of econommics-Ho Chi Minh city Luận văn thạc sĩ

Ministry of Education and Training National University Entrance Examination Ordinary Least Squares Scholastic Aptitude Test Survey Economic Attitude Two-Stage Least Squares Test of Under

I

HO CHI MINH CITY - VIETNAM THE HAGUE - THE NETHERLANDS

THE VIETNAM- NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS

DETERMINANTS OF STUDENT'S LEARNING:

CASE STUDY IN MACROECONOMICS

AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS- HO CHI MINH CITY

By Le Thanh Nhan

MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS

• BQ GIAO DVC DAO

TRliONG HQC KINH TE TP.HCM THU'VIEN

HO CHI MINH CITY, NOVEMBER 2009

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES

HO CHI MINH CITY - VIETNAM THE HAGUE -THE NETHERLANDS

THE VIETNAM- NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS

DETERMINANTS OF STUDENT'S LEARNING:

CASE STUDY IN MACROECONOMICS

AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS- HO CHI MINH CITY

By Le Thanh Nhan

Academic Supervisors:

- Assoc Prof Nguyen Trong Hoai, PhD

- Chau Van Thanh, M.A

HO CHI MINH CITY, NOVEMBER 2009

CERTIFICATION

I declare that the thesis hereby submitted for the Master degree at the Vietnam Netherlands Programme for M.A in Development Economics is my own work and has not been previously submitted by me at another university for any degree I cede copyright of the thesis in favor of the Vietnam - Netherlands programme for M.A in Development Economics at the University of Economics,

-Ho Chi Minh City

Ho Chi Minh City, November 2009

Le Thanh Nhan

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to express my gratitude to all those who gave me the possibility to complete this thesis

I am most grateful to my supervisors, Assoc Prof Dr Nguyen Trong Hoai and

Mr Chau Van Thanh, who have instructed, encouraged and given me comments for my thesis, as well as forgiven my mistakes while I was carrying out this research

I would like to thank to all lectures and staff of the Vietnam - Netherlands Programme at the University of Economics, Ho Chi Minh City

I also want to say thank you to my colleagues and friends at the Office of Undergraduate Training and Students Service Office at the University of Economics, Ho Chi Minh City for their assistance in the process of my thesis completion

Finally, I especially thank to my partner friend, who hel_2ed _me in finding materials, designing the survey and collecting data for the thesis

ABSTRACT

The objective of this thesis is to fmd out the determinants that influence the

performance of studying macroeconomics and their relationships The scope of

this research is limited to sophomore students at the University of Economics, Ho

Chi Minh City

In the conceptual framework, hypotheses about determinants related to

performance of studying macroeconomics were proposed They are students'

aptitude, efforts, attitude toward economics along with their personal

characteristics

A survey designed from Survey Economic Attitude from the National Committee

on Economic Attitude Measurement has been used with Exploratory Factor

Analysis to measure if the theoretical constructs in this research were satisfactory

in terms of reliability and validity The relationships and hypotheses then have

been tested by using a Two Stage Least Square method

The main findings are the significant impacts of aptitude and efforts on studying_ macroeconomics but the attitude toward it

··· TABLE OF CONTENTS

CERTIFICATION i

AC:KN"OWLEDGEMENT ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF TABLES vii

LIST OF FIRGUES vii

Chapter 1: Introduction 1

1.1 Problem statement 1

1.2 Research Objectives 3

1 3 Research questions 4

1 4 Research methodology 4

1 5 Delimitation 4

1.6 Thesis structure: 5

-

2.1 Definitions 6

2.2 Theoretical backgrounds 6

2.2.1 Student learning 10

2.2.2 Aptitude 11

2.2.3 Efforts 12

2.2.4 Attitude 12

2 3 Empirical studies 13

2.4 Chapter remarks: 18

Chapter 3: Research Methodology 19

3.1 Independent variables and its measurement 19

3.2 Descriptive analysis 22

3.3 Empirical research model 22

3 4 Sampling process 23

3.5 Research context 24

3.6 Chapter remarks: 28

Chapter 4: Research findings 29

4.1 Sample description 29

4.2 Gender 29

4.3 Location 30

4.4 Attitude and efforts toward macroeconomics 32

4 5 Reliability analysis 34

4.6 Factor analysis 35

_ -Chapter 5: Conclusions, Policy recommendation and limitations 41

5.1 Conclusions 41

5.2 Recommendations 43

5 3 Limitations of the research 44

REFERENCES 45

APPENDICES 50

Ministry of Education and Training National University Entrance Examination Ordinary Least Squares

Scholastic Aptitude Test Survey Economic Attitude Two-Stage Least Squares Test of Understanding of College Economics University of Economics, Ho Chi Minh City Undergraduate Training and Student Services World Trade Organization

LIST OFT ABLES

Table 4.1: Gender and Average ofMacroeconomics score

Table 4.2: Testing the Mean Difference between two groups of gender

Table 4.3: Descriptive analysis of location and average macroeconomics score Table 4.4: ANOV A analysis the difference between groups of location

Table 4.5: Test of Homogeneity of Variances among locations

Table 4.6: Tamhane test for the specific differences between groups oflocation Table 4.7: Attitude toward macroeconomics before studying

Table 4.8: Attitude toward macroeconomics after studying

Table 4.9: Efforts toward studying macroeconomics

Table 4.10: Reliability statistics about efforts and attitude toward macroeconomics Table 4.11: Factor analysis for attitude before studying macroeconomics

Table 4.12: Factor analysis for attitude after studying macroeconomics

Table 4.13: Factor analysis for efforts toward studying macroeconomics

Table 4.14: Summary ofthe hypotheses testing

Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 Problem statement

The economic development in Vietnam was very impressive during the I990 decade The growth of the economy comes along with many factors, directly and · indirectly One of them is from education, in my opinion Although there have been some controversies about the progression as well as the fall while some renovations were deployed during last more than I 0 years, nowadays, many (domestic and oversea) professors pay attention to a vast and complete educational renovation again, especially when Vietnam has accessed to WTO since 2006

A system of education stretches from kindergarten to higher education The rapid economic development brings about high demand of labor, so does the demand of managers Then, a high proportion of high school pupils apply to universities which are major in economics and business administration So are in-service students The number of students enrolled in universities major in economics and business administration has been always higher than other disciplines recently Vietnamese people usually say that "first business, second medicine" A famous ancient scholar Le Quy Don said that "No trade no wealth" Another example is about the higher demand in field of finance and banking after stock market was established in Vietnam since 200 I, lead to a number of faculties and universities focus in this field has grown while people are in doubt about their quality Therefore, quality assurance of learning and teaching principles of economics is so quite important

In the field of economics and business administration, it is much concerned about economics education at the undergraduate level In my opinion, principles of economics are basic courses for any student, not only in universities of economics and business administration but also some other universities of social science At the University of Economics, Ho Chi Minh City (UEH), although they are compulsory subjects, only a small ratio of students paid high attention and spend

\

more time on studying economics while the total load of education has been decreasing recently, generally about 240 credits required for an undergraduate student in 2004 reduced to 180 since 2006 (UEH 2006) The average score of microeconomics and macroeconomics at UEH in the last school year is only about 6.22 - 6.42 over 10, most focus on the range from 5 to 7 (Data from UTSS Office)

In a recent contest "Commentary essays for Vietnamese economy in 2008" organized by Student and Youth Union at UEH, only a little number of students could apply economics knowledge into their papers (UEH Youth Union 2008) So

in this research, a wonder about which factors affected the outcome of a student studying principles of economics at the UEH has been raised Then we could find out how to improve their performance as well as students classification for a better outcome

What determinants that influence student learning economics? Many economic education studies have attempted to answer this question A number of studies have examined the impact of student characteristics on student performance in introductory economics courses (Myatt and Waddel 1990; Anderson, Benjamin and Fuss 1994; Brasfield, Harrison and McCoy 1993, Betts and Morell 1999) Other studies evaluated the effectiveness of alternative methods of teaching on students' study result (Davisson and Bonello 1976; Paden, Dalgaard and Barr 1977; Attiyeh, Bach and Lumsen 1969-1970; Bach and Saunders 1965; Charkins, O'Toole and Wetzel 1983) Aptitude, attitude and efforts toward studying economics have also been concerned in many researches Allison (cited in Siegfried and Fels, 1979), Becker (1983a) has found low positive correlation between achievement and student's effort, but Becker and Salemi (1977) didn't find any impact of study time on performance while Siegfried and Fels (1979) confirmed that aptitude is the most important determinant, which is positively related to test performance In recently, Romer (1993) tested the effect of attendance on student performance His fmding is the attendance did contribute significantly to the academic performance of students in a large intermediate macro-course The same to the research result ofDevadoss and Foltz (1996) King

(1999) and Schmidt (1983) found that the time spending for studying economics outside the classroom is also important related to student achievement In the other hand, Park and Merr (1990) proved that effort and intelligence determine the academic performance in money and banking courses while demographic variables did not contribute

Briefly it is said that, researches about economic education have been started since 1960s in the US with factor determination, from simple socio-characteristics (gender, race, parents' education, income, hours of work ) or time-distribution to more complicated factors (attitude, efforts, learning and teaching styles ) and then the difference of culture, race, gender on learning style, effects on performance and expansions applied to other countries as well as using modern teaching methods like computer-assisted, class game, web-based, etc

All students at UEH must study microeconomics, and then, macroeconomics in the general period The structure of the macroeconomics examination consists of 2 parts, writing and multiple-choice while structure of microeconomics test has multiple-choice questions alone In fact, there is difference in what the two types

of exams measure "Multiple-choice questions may encourage memorization of information, rather than the understanding of concepts, are more likely to be misconstrued by students, and leave more to chance in the form of guessing"

(Kreig and Uyar, p.230, 2001) Yates (1978, cited in Becker 1983a) argued that many educational objectives can not be only measured by multiple-choice tests

So, in order to have a better assessment, macroeconomics would be the reasonable decision for this research to find out the answers related to the wonder above at the UEH

1.2 Research Objectives

The main objectives are:

- To fmd out which determinants that influence students' performance in studying macroeconomics

To determine the relationship between determinants and UEH student's performance in studying macroeconomics

- To suggest policy recommendations for lecturers, students and educational managers at UEH

The Microsoft Excel and SPSS software are main useful tools to process the data for the precise factor analysis as well as regression

1 5 Delimitation

This research based on information from students at UEH after they study microeconomics and before macroeconomics Some information are archived at

the office of undergraduate training, others are self-evaluations from a paper of questionnaire

1 6 Thesis structure:

This thesis has 5 chapters, starting with an introduction about Problem statement, Research objectives, Research questions, Research methodology, and its delimitation The second chapter presents the literature review on theory and conceptual framework, empirical studies that serve as the background for hypothesis development The third chapter is about the methodology consisting of research design, concept measurement and data collection The chapter 4 reports the result of data analysis before the chapter 5 which summarizes all about the research results and its recommendations

Chapter 2: Literature review

This chapter is presented by 3 parts The ftrst one is a discussion about concepts related to the research Secondly, some theories related to economic education that would be useful to formulate a conceptual model for our study would be reviewed Finally, a glance at some empirical studies which have been researched will help

us to identify the most significant variables that we can use to ftnd out the relationship between these determinants and performance of studying macroeconomics at UEH

Performance of studying macroeconomics

Performance of studying macroeconomics shows us how students learn and acquire the knowledge from studying it, how they understand and identify as well

as analyze macroeconomics problems It is usually measured by an examination score, in combination with some extra testing activities

2.2 Theoretical backgrounds

Most of researchers on economic education based on the assumption that the major objective of economic education is very narrowly defmed concept of learning, related in the way student performance measured by achievement or course grade

(Yates 1978 in Siegfried and Fels 1979), as an indicator of how much information that a student has after the course Researchers have attempted to model student learning by incorporating a set of variables measuring the relationships between student achievement and age, gender, teaching mode, textbook, instructor, class size, computers, time and effort, prior economic knowledge, aptitude, entry score, attitude toward economics (Cowie et al 1997, Siegfried and Fels 1979, Becker 1983a, Manahan 1983, Davisson and Bonello 1976, Simmons and Alexander 1978) These models have typically taken the form of production function where the output is the performance of learning, which is measured by achievement or course grades

According to summary of Bowles ( 1970), an educational production functions used to seek the affected educational output by altering school inputs in the common form as followed:

A;= fo + fiXn + JiX2; + + /:Xz; + u; [2.1]

Where

A;: the achievement score (or other output measure for the i'h student);

fo, ,fz: the parameters of the production function to be estimated;

}[_j;: the amount of input} devoted to observation i 's education,}= 1 z

ui: the disturbance term

This model was used frequently for a long time with research in economic education One of the common things that could be easily recognized from production function is the personal characteristics and aptitude usually appears in every research about this field Not always, but mostly these variables are significant The few studies that have included measures of student's socioeconomics backgrounds have found such variables as family income and/or parent's education to be unimportant (Siegfried and Fels, 1979) Another example, Simmons and Alexander (1978) used a model about Educational Production Function as

Ait = g[F;(tJ' S;(tJ, P;(tJ' l;(t)] [2.2]

Among that, F stands for family background characteristics, S for school inputs, P for peer group characteristics and I for initial endowments (or innate abilities) Another research example is from Ziegert (2000) using a model to estimate the effect of personality temperament on learning in economics like this:

Output =/(Student abilities, student demographic, personal temperament) [2 3 J

Gender, age, race, and family background have also been used in learning studies (Manahan 1983, Navarro and Shoemaker 2000, Bonello, Swartz and Davisson

1984, Anderson, Benjamin and Fuss 1994, Betts and Morell 1999) But "measures

of student maturity, such as age, year in school, and number of previous college credit hour, usually show no relationship to cognitive performance" (Siegfried and

Fels, p.938, 1979) while Simmons and Alexander (1978) came to a conclusion that home background or parental socioeconomic status; strongly influences student performance Betts and Morell (1999) also come to the same conclusion with confirmation about the strong affects on GP A at a university by personal background; include student's family background (income and race), gender as well as demographic environment

However, this general test is not likely to conform to the purpose and content of a particular economics course, which is only concerned with a few topics (Siegfried and Fels, p.926, 1979) They made a comment that, due to lack of theory of learning, some problems of the production function above needs to be concerned

"There has been little concern with such issues as simultaneity (if student interest

is an output, does it not feed back into cognitive understanding?), functional form (are there interactions among the independent variable) and the statistical techniques employed" Becker (1983b) also affirmed with this comment

Becker (1983b) proposed a framework to build general equilibrium model in which it shows demand of student when studying economics According to Becker's model, students have to allocate their time and resources between economics and other subjects in the same semester as well as opportunity for a

part-time job or recreation to maximize their utility Anyway, Becker thought that

it is not easy to formalize a model of full educational process because of the market imperfections that arise once a student has decided to attend a given institution Student doesn't demand economic education by themselves but follow

a bundle of education goods provided by their institution

Davisson and Bonello (1976) proposed taxonomy for orgamzmg empirical research They specify three categories of explanatory variables and the model of learning is human capital (e.g Math, ACT score, grade point average), utilization rate (e.g attendance, study time), and technology (e.g lectures, computer usage)

Student Learning= f(human capital, utilization rates, technology) [2.4]

Follow model [2.4], Davisson and Bonello (1976) argued that when participating

in a specific subject, personal characteristics of each student will interact with the teaching method from teacher along with time they spending for the subject The final target of a student is to maximize utilization which means a best educational achievement Durr (1999) proposed the model

Grade =/(Motivation, Ability, Gender, Effort) [2 5]

·· However, Bowles (f970) discussed that theieast squares-technique yields unbiased estimates of the regression coefficients only if the independent variables are exogenous When some school inputs can perhaps be regarded as exogenous to the system, there are still some endogenous inputs, for example, student attitudes Bowles (p.18, 1970) argued that "student attitudes toward self and toward learning are a consequence of past and present achievement (as well as other influences) and are important determinants of achievement" The production

-function above could be rewritten as

A= f(X;, ,Xs, attitudes) [2.5]

And

Attitudes= g(Xp ,XZJ achievement- past and present) [2.6]

Based on theory of information, with the same purpose when paying attention to two-way causation between attitude and performance, Hodgin (1984) also suggested using TSLS method to test it by a model with the bidirectional causality between attitude and economics learning He argued that, during studying economics course, two things are simultaneously and interactively occurring: attitudes are being modified due to information concerning economics and relative performance, and vice-versus, performance is altered by attitude toward economics As student collects information about nature of economics, and his or her ability to comprehend the course, attitude and grade expectation seemed to be modified And once new information is received, student will make a prediction about chance of success or failure in the course It means grade expectation and attitude toward economics may be changed

2.2.1 Student learning

Studying and examination are two of important issues of education To study is to acquire the knowledge, information about a typical subject then to apply into daily activities Examination is a way of checking how much information a student has effected to collect and comprehend In economic education researches, some typical measurements to measure student learning are Test of Economics Understanding (TEU), Test of Economics Comprehensions (TEC) or the most widely used instrument is Test of Understanding in College Economics (TUCE) , TUCE is a multiple-choice test developed in 1968, which tests both micro and macroeconomics It is said that, TUCE is an effective discrimination of students with high and low levels of ability and a good measure of prior ability and analytical skills (Buckles and Welsh 1972 in Siegfried and Fels 1979) TUCE could be used to measure the absolute achievement, absolute improvement, and percentage improvement in studying economics with pre- and post-score ofTUCE

Recent studies have relied on using student course grades (Navarro and Shoemaker

1999, Navarro and Shoemaker 2000) Course grades or tests can be used as indicators of how much information that a student has after the course, but it

cannot be used if the structure of the tests are as different as chalk and cheese between classes, lecturers with various teaching styles In order to have unbiased evaluation about economics performance, all observations must have similar characteristics, studying in almost the same class size or have the same homogenous class organization, studying with a common teaching style which has been totally agreed among lecturers or approved by scientific and training council and they have to answer the same questions at the final examination Course grade

is not only a final score of examination but the score of progression student achieved during studying principles of economics by doing mid-term test, assignments or homework

Final examination usually consists of constructed response or multiple-choice questions Each type of exam measure has its advantages along with disadvantages and students would have their own learning and consolidation style in order to respond to it Multiple-choice pay much attention to memorization of information rather than the understanding of concepts (Kreig and Uyar, 200 I) and it can not measure some educational objectives (Yates 1978, cited in Becker 1983a) A combination of constructed response and multiple-choice questions could almost meet the requirement of economics education

2.2.2 Aptitude

Human capital or student abilities variables are a measure of a student's aptitude for learning Another way to approach this is using previous GPA or SAT Most studies used SAT/ACT scores and GPA to measure student's ability and fmd a positive and significant relationship between such variables and student learning

An earlier work shows strongly significant positive links between high school

GP A and test score and success of undergraduates (Morell, 1999) Prince, Kipps, Wilhem and Wetzel (1981) found that pre-score of TUCE is an appropriate measure of economic knowledge or as a proxy for student aptitude Siegfried and Fels (1979) reviewed in some studies and find that mathematics scores could be an instrument to present aptitude and to seems to be positive and significantly

associated with economics test performance A hypothesis could be withdrawn for the study, as

H1: Aptitude has a positive impact on performance of studying macroeconomics

2.2.3 Efforts

The utilization rate or effort is time spent on studying in a course It can be measured by the percentage of class attendance (Devadoss and Foltz, 1996), hours per week working on the course outside the classroom (King, 1999) Developing

a model of inventory study time, Becker (1983b) concluded that increasing time spent studying economics resulted in positive outcomes in student learning This finding is supported by many studies such as King (1999) and Schmidt (1983) However, not all students who attend class regularly pay high attention to lectures That's why some researches didn't fmd any impact of study time on performance (Siegfried and Fels 1979) Ow (2005) suggested using a survey questionnaire to investigate student's effort and attitude towards their studies to determine the importance of taking notes or review the lesson after class, discussion, reading, preparation for the exam, etc So is it reasonable to propose a hypothesis about efforts on studying macroeconomics for the study like this

H2 : Efforts has an impact on performance of studying macroeconomics

2.2.4 Attitude

When attending a class of economics, students usually face 2 possible options: either collect as much information as they can to master the nature of economics (via lectures and readings) or just only enough to comprehend the subject (via passing examination scores) Then attitudes and grade expectations are likely to be modified (Hodgin 1984) Of course any student always wants to achieve the best score as they can, but the different attitude toward the subject would change the way they study

Walstad and Soper (1981) had reviewed some previous researches and found that former methods of economic attitude measurement were poorly developed and

report limited information on instrument reliability or validity, or too complex to measure Based on instrument previously developed by Hodgin and Manahan (1979, cited in Walstad and Soper 1981), the National Committee on Economic Attitude Measurement conducted a new attitude measure named Survey on Economics Attitude (SEA) SEA, which has been considered by provide a measurement tool about Attitude Toward Economics (ATE) with good validity, reliability and known characteristics A more positive ATE maybe an intended outcome for a course in economics Base on that, there is a suggestion about the following hypothesis for the study:

H3: Attitude toward economics has an impact on performance of studying macroeconomics

In the other angle about variables of research models, many researchers whose goals are to compare one teaching method with others use a dummy variable to represent technology (Davisson and Bonello 1976; Paden, Dalgaard and Barr

1977) "However, it appears that different teaching methods have little impact on student learning" (Siegfried and Fels, p.927, 1979) One reasonable explanation for this result is that the instructor's teaching style affects different students differently (Wetzel, Potter and O'Toole, 1982) Using the Grash - Reichmann Learning Styles Questionnaire, Charkins, O'Toole and Wetzel (1985) conducted researches at Purdue University to test the effect of the link between teacher and student learning styles on student achievement The difference between teaching and learning style scores from the dependent questions was used to obtain a numerical score that reflected the divergence between a student's learning style and the teacher's teaching style Their findings only suggest that the larger the divergence between teaching styles and learning styles, the lower the student's gain in achievement in economics

2.3 Empirical studies

To estimate the production function, many researches have used an OLS model Moreover, qualitative response analysis in place of quantitative analysis has been

suggested (Becker 1983c ) Spector and Mazzeo (1980) used a probit model in analyzing the probability of getting a grade in intermediate macroeconomics Leppel (1984) used a Tobit model in comparing the academic performance of returning and continuing students Park and Kerr (1990) used multinomial logit analysis to identify those variables that determine a student's grade in undergraduate money and banking course while Hodgin (1984), Manahan (1983), used simultaneous models with two-stage least square (TSLS) method

Some economic education researches were developed based on theory of school learning by Bloom was published in "Human Characteristics and School Learning" Bloom's target is attempts to explain, to predict and to modify

individual differences in school learning (Rennie, 1979) His model has three main parts: "(I) characteristics that the student brings to the learning situation, namely, cognitive entry behaviors and affective entry characteristics; (2) quality of instruction (i.e., cues provided to the learner, participation of the learner, reinforcement of the learner, and feedback and correction) in relation to a particular learning task; and (3) learning outcomes, including level and type of achievement, rate of learning, and affective outcomes"

Manahan (1983) based on Bloom's theory of learning with the modification and contributions of Allison (1977) and Hanushek (1979) to suggest another type of production function, in which outcome of the studying process is described by 2 aspects: achievement and attitude toward course

Achievement= /(ability, attitude, effort, quality of instructor) [2 7]

And

Attitude = g(achievement, ability, effort, socio, quality of instructor) [2.8]

Bloom in his book Human Characteristics and School Learning (Manahan 1983)

argued that under favorable learning conditions, student has the knowledge that is prerequisite and positive affect toward the learning task and when the instruction is appropriate, it offers feedback and correction to the learner Ramsett, Johnson, and

Adams (1973) (in Siegfried and Fels, 1979) found that those students who were more favorably disposed toward the subject of economics did better on the post-course TUCE, holding pre-TUCE and socio-demographic factors constant As Manahan's expectation (Manahan 1983), two factors have casual influence The result when using TSLS method showed that attitude and achievement don't have any mutual effect, and attitude was established before starting study, with a little bit change during class, and suggested that all estimations must consider socioeconomic variables or student background characteristics Moreover, he also mentioned that using a comparison of the OLS and TSLS estimates had showed that some coefficients in the attitude equation change depending upon the estimating technique

In another viewpoint based on theory of information, in the same purpose when paying attention to two-way causation between attitude and performance, Hodgin (1984) also suggested to use TSLS method to test it In a paper about information theory and attitude formation in economic education, he built a model with the bidirectional causality between attitude and economics learning using the economics of information theory He argued that, during studying economtcs course, two things are simultaneously and interactively occurring: attitudes are being modified due to information concerning economics and relative performance, and vice-versus, performance is altered by attitude toward economics Specifically, let ATE be the attitude toward economics, a function of the expected utility from the course would be

ATE= /(Performance, Prior Attitude, Age, Sex) [2.9]

Then

Performance= /(Attitude, Ability, Prior Knowledge, Effort) [2.10]

Student's attitude towards the course is another factor which needs to be concerned

as an important measurement With the high attitude toward its subjects, students will tend to spend more time on reading, discussion as well as finding extra

materials prepare for class It could be considered as another factor instead of utilization previously

Performance on

Economics & Examinations

Attitudes Toward Economics

Intention to Comprehend Economics Figure 2.1: Circular flow of influence from attitude through intention to performance

as a feedback influence on attitude

Source: Hodgin, Robert F (1984) Information Theory and Attitude Formation in Economic

Education The Journal of Economic Education, 15(3), 191 - 196

The diagram above described the relation ships of influence from attitude through intention to performance and then a feedback to attitude (Hodgin 1984 ) As student collects information ·about nature of economics, and his or her ability to comprehend the course, attitude and grade expectation seemed to be modified And once new information is received, student will make a prediction about chance of success or failure in the course It means grade expectation and attitude toward economics may be changed

Hodgin collected the data from 500 students which had been studying at the Illinois State University in 1978, which was then reduced to 190 due to lack of information from a number of given students In the attitude expression, the performance coefficient was found to be significant, but the attitude coefficient in the performance expression was not while remaining exogenous variables were significant at the 0.05 level or higher (except age, at 0.10) although they are selected to reflect only those argumentatively necessary to keep the model specification simple and efficient These results support that informational signal about performance in economics affect attitude (Hodgin, 1984)

The simultaneous model suggested by Hodgin above is very useful in according to the objectives of the research This model is an expansion of the Educational Production Function which was widely used previously Personal characteristics, aptitude, prior knowledge, attitude and efforts are potential factors that could have effects on the performance of studying economics

The National Committee on Economic Attitude Measurement identified instrument which had been developed by Hodgin (1984) and Manahan (1979, cited in Walstad and Soper 1981) as the best for use with college students Then in the research of measuring economic attitudes, Walstad and Soper (1981) has design questionnaires to make a survey about measuring economic attitudes in high school, which then become part of a national evaluation of high school economic education programs This Survey on Economic Attitude (SEA) provides an attitude measurement tool with good validity, reliability and known characteristics According to their research, a more positive attitude towards economics (ATE) may be an intended outcome for a course in economics

With the results above, the SEA could be used as an instrument in this research to measure the ATE, which possibly affects the outcome of studying macroeconomics A conceptual framework has been suggested for this research to find the relationship between academic performance of macroeconomics and a set

of variables consists of aptitude, efforts and attitude toward studying macroeconomics based on the research model of Hodgin (1984) A TSLS regression analysis would be used to determine value of the coefficients as well theirs significances It is described as below:

Aptitude Prior knowledge Academic

_

performance

Prior attitude Attitude I

I Age, Gender Figure 2.2: Conceptual framework

The proposed hypotheses are summarized as followed:

HI: Aptitude has a positive impact on performance of studying

macroeconomics H2: Efforts has an impact on performance of studying

macroeconomics H3: Attitude toward economics has an impact on performance of

studying macroeconomics

2.4 Chapter remarks:

In order to measure determinants that affect student's performance of studying macroeconomics, some factors have been reviewed and proposed to be potential factors in the research They are student's aptitude, attitude and efforts toward studying economics On the other hand, personal characteristics variable is also concerned in the research Based on educational production function which has been used widely, a simultaneous model with TSLS method from Hodgin (1984) could be used to measure the relationship between outcome of studying macroeconomics and the potential factors

Chapter 3: Research Methodology

This chapter is to discuss the methodology used in this research to test the conceptual framework mentioned in the previous chapter

It is started with the first step of research by generating items for the survey so that

it could be appropriate to the conceptual framework Then some draft survey would be made to check about the understanding of the questions and adjusted them into a fully worked-out survey

Qualitative and quantitative method would be deployed in this research The qualitative method is employed to define the concepts and then observe the student performance and independent variables based on the modified survey which was used by Ow (2005) and Walstad & Soper (1981) Quantitative method with EFA to test the validity of items in the survey and extract them into variables before running regression to fmd out the relationship between academic performance and determinants that could affect on it, as well as test the hypotheses which are suggested above

3.1 Independent variables and its measurement

From the literature view, 3 main factors related to performance of studying economics were generated for the conceptual framework They are aptitude, efforts and attitude toward studying economics In addition, personal characteristics are also examined in this research as moderator variables

However, it's so hard to fmd the data of SAT or high school GPA like other previous researches A suggestion is to use mathematics, physics, chemistry (3 subjects of the NUEE) and English as a set of independent variables instead as other previous researchers did Moreover, personal characteristics about gender, location, and race were also placed in the model to find out more information related to the outcome of studying macroeconomics

Scales design

In order to consider attitude, and effort accompanied, toward economics, 2 surveys with 2 questionnaires were carried out before and after they studied macroeconomics (of course, after they had finished microeconomics) The next step is using Likert scale to measure the related items and Exploratory Factor Analysis to reduce these items into main factors as suggested in the conceptual framework before conducting a test about the validity of these measures

Walstad and Soper (1981) has design the Survey on Economic Attitude (SEA) to evaluate the Attitude Towards Economics The original questionnaire of SEA contains questions which was scaled from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) Base on this questionnaire, after a small draft survey, a little bit modification would be adjusted to make the survey become clearer

In the survey about attitude toward macroeconomics before studying, the questionnaire used Likert scales to measure how did students feel and how did they know about macroeconomics as well as tentative inventory of time spent for

it This questionnaire concerned how easy or difficult, how boring or interesting UEH students had thought about macroeconomics and how useful it could bring back to themselves

After doing some initial draft survey to check about the understanding, scales were adjusted to adopt with student's psychology when answering questionnaire Some questions that could make answerers confuse were omitted or changed Questions

to check student's concentration on answers were also created Making a test of Cronbach's alpha about the significance of factors, the questions (variables) that are not suitable could be eliminated

Adjusted questionnaire about attitude toward macroeconomics contains 9 questions and would be evaluated by 5 levels, from "strongly disagree" to

"strongly agree" The value of PRE variable was generated by applying factor analysis for the 9 adjusted questions to classify factors into groups to measure attitude before studying macroeconomics The KMO coefficient was created with acceptable least value 0.5 The "factor loading" standard about the difference among factors could be accepted at 0.4 or more

When students finished studying macroeconomics, interviewers came back to classes again to make another survey about student's effort at macroeconomics class, using the questionnaire from the survey to investigate university students' efforts and attitudes towards their studies by Ow (2005), as well as SEA to measure their attitude toward macroeconomics after studying it Questionnaire used by Ow (2005) is quite simple and suitable to Vietnamese students, especially when they are not so much familiar with answering a survey Moreover, a draft group interview was conducted before some unsuitable items or misunderstanding questions were adjusted, even eliminated, to make the questionnaire become clearer 8 questions were used to consider their endeavor during that semester for macroeconomics class, such as their class attendance, review before going to class, homework, discussion at class, extra materials reading, exchange ideas with classmates or lecturers, how they had consolidated before examination From the data from the survey, variables about effort on studying macroeconomics would be generated to be used in the research model

About post-attitude toward macroeconomics, questions were almost the same as previous survey to test the change between before and after studying macroeconomics Similarly to PRE variable, POST variable were generated by applying factor analysis for the 9 adjusted questions to classify factors about attitude toward macroeconomics after studying into groups with the same KMO coefficient testing at 0.5, "factor loading" at 0.4 and test ofCronbach's alpha about significance of factors And the same way to effect variables about their effort during class

3.2 Descriptive analysis

In order to obtain a general view about characteristics and classification of students who enrolled into UEH, we have made a small General description about UEH students focus on the relationships between personal characteristics such as gender, location to the their achievement in macroeconomics This secondary data

we obtained from Office of Undergraduate Training and Student Service at UEH

3.3 Empirical research model

Literature review has provided me a lot of information about theory and achievements in economic education that people had done before and form the conceptual framework of the research Based on that, in order to analysis determinants influence study performance in economics subjects at UEH, in this paper, we paid attention to student's attitude toward macroeconomics before and after learning, along with using Bloom's theory of learning with a small modification from Hodgin's theory of information to make it more clearly within a simultaneous model as suggested

In addition, a T -test and ANOV A test to see how difference among determinants affecting toward macroeconomics achievement Simultaneous model with TSLS method was used to find out the relationship between attitude and efforts toward macroeconomics, their ability and pervious related knowledge, English on macroeconomics

macro= f(post-attitude, maths, physic, chemistry, English, micro, efforts) [3.1]