Motivational Factors Custom Essay

For the part of sample characteristic – A total of 479 subjects included
199 (41.5%) male students and 280 (58.5%) female students. Female students
outnumbered male students significantly across all three HTM institutions.
This result is in line with previous studies where HTM degrees were sought
by more female students than male students in Asian countries, such
as China, Taiwan, Korea, and Hong Kong (Kim et al., 2007; Lee et al.,2006).
The majority of the subjects (44%) were fourth year students or seniors who
possessed clear career goals. The participation of freshman(13.6%) and
sophomores (14.2%) was relatively weak because
they were taking more general education courses than HTM courses at the
time of the survey. Students’ decision to major in HTM can be affected
by their referents or influencers, such as parents, teachers, and peers
(O’Mahony et al., 2001). In this study, a significant portion
of respondents (44.9%) indicated that their decision to study HTM was
influenced by others; parents/family (15.5%), friends (10.2%), teachers
(7.3%), relatives (5.4%), and acquaintances (5%). Furthermore, 68% of
students indicated their interest in studying HTM abroad and in
particular, female students (72%) indicated a higher interest level thanm
male students (63%).

For the part of Motivational Factors – In order to delineate underlying
dimensions of study motivations,a factor analysis using varimax rotation
with 20 motivational items was conducted; the results are presented in
Exhibit 1. Six factors with an eigenvalue greater than 1.0 were identified
through the analysis and were labeled: ???Self-actualization,’
???Job opportunity,’ ???Field attractiveness,’
???Foreign experience,’ ???External influence,’ and
???Ease of Study.’ These six factors together explained 69.7%
of variance. The reliability alphas for six
factors ranged from .91 to .61. Each motivational item’s communalities
were greater than .5 and all factor loadings were above .5, indicating a
reasonably high correlation between the factors and their individual items
(Lee et al., 2006).