Volume 20 Number 1
May 1981

Thomas M. Sawyer

Many scholars have studied the educational achievements of American Indian students, but the scholarship does not yet seem to have touched on one significant area which may have an important bearing on the success of the American Indian student in college. While numerous master’s theses, doctoral dissertations, and articles have reported on intelligence testing of Indian students, vocational choices, achievements, and values affecting achievement,’ none known has examined the Indian student’s study habits and attitudes. A knowledge of how Indian student’s habits and attitudes compare to the average college student’s should be helpful to teachers, administrators, and counselors working with Indian students. Although Indian college students seem to differ from the average college students in a few areas, the school backgrounds may be more significant in their study habits and attitudes.

One of the major objectives of the Special Services/Learning Center program at Northern Montana College in Havre, is to help Indian students succeed in college. Although Northern Montana College is a relatively small school (an enrollment of about 1,400), because of its location it enrolls a significant percentage of Indian students. The great majority of these Indian students reside on the four reservations in Northern Montana: Blackfeet, Rocky Boys (Chippewa and Cree), Fort Belknap (Assiniboin and Atsini), and Fort Peck (Assiniboin and Sioux).

One service the Special Services/Learning Center Program provides for these students and all others is a study skills course. This course is often recommended for freshmen, many of whom are from rural backgrounds.

The McGraw-Hill "Inventory of Study Habits and Attitudes" contains 49 questions that can be answered either "Yes" or "No." This survey proves helpful in counseling students because the 49 questions are divided into seven categories of seven questions each: listening and notetaking, general study habits, relationships with teachers and courses, motivation, organization of effort, concentration, and emotional problems. Thus, for each section of seven questions, a score from zero to seven for up to seven "correct" answers can be obtained, which can be compared to the national mean score. The scores on six of the sections (all but listening and notetaking) can be combined to produce a raw score which can be converted to a percentile score (by tables given in the "Examiner’s Manual") for comparison of the individual student’s score with the national group. According to the "Examiner’s Manual," the national average raw score on six sections for a group of 1787 college freshmen and college bound juniors and seniors in high school is 21.21. The average raw score for the 147 Northern Montana College students was 21.07.

By dividing the Northern Montana College (NMC) students into four separate groups, the following raw scores were obtained; white male students (22.18), Indian male students (21.50), white female students (21.09), and Indian female students (19.95). These scores may seem low for college students; however, the average raw score for an NMC student (21.07) translates into a percentile rank of 63 for the national group of four-year college freshmen. Nevertheless, the same score of 21 would result in a percentile rank of only 47 for two-year college freshmen and the high school students. Also, a raw score of 25 would result in a 79th percentile rank for four-year college freshmen, a 63rd percentile rank for two-year college freshmen, and a 67th percentile rank for high school students. In other words, four-year college freshmen have poorer study habits and attitudes than college-bound juniors and seniors in high school. One might conclude that, nationally, study habits and attitudes deteriorate as students move from high school to college.

However, the main focus of this research was an examination of study habits and attitudes of Indian students. The accompanying table gives the mean scores in the seven categories of the "Inventory of Study Habits and Attitudes." In addition to the scores for four separate groups of students (white/Indian male, white/Indian female), the scores for the total Northern Montana group and for the national group are presented. According to the authors of the test, in each category the ideal score would be seven, the worst score would be zero.

An examination of some of the significant deviations by the four student groups from the Northern Montana College average and from the national average should reveal if Indian students’ study habits and attitudes differ from the average college students’ in any particular ways.

TABLE 1
Mean Scores in Seven Categories of Study Skills

First, and most obviously, is the great disparity in the average scores of the national group of students and the Northern Montana students in the area of listening and notetaking. No single group of NMC students seems significantly below the college average, but the college average is significantly below the national average. Furthermore, no single question of the seven questions about listening and notetaking proved especially difficult for the Northern Montana students. The overall difficulty that NMC students have with listening and notetaking may stem from their educational backgrounds in small, rurally isolated towns. Many of the 147 students came from small high schools, often with graduating classes of less than 25. In such small schools, the students are probably not accustomed to taking notes in lecture situations because there are few, if any lectures.

Although the Northern Montana College students may have some difficulties in listening and notetaking, their scores in the areas of general study habits, relationships with teachers and courses, motivation, and concentration are average or above average. However, one score in the area of motivation is significantly lower than the national average and the college average. The male Indian students, who had the lower score, scored significantly lower on two separate questions: "I think I have trouble studying because I don’t know what my goals are" and "I try to take courses so that I will not have to study hard." These may not seem related, but if a student wants to remain in college (for whatever reason), despite being unsure of his goals, then it seems natural that such a student might take courses so he would not have to study hard.

In the area of organization of effort, the Northern Montana College students scored just slightly below the sample of national students (3.07 to 3.15 respectively). The male students scored above the national average, with both the white and Indian students indicating that they kept up to date with their work by answering "No" to the following statement: "Sometimes I let the work in a course pile up, then cram madly at the end." Both the white and Indian male students at NMC answered this question negatively at about a 65% rate while the national average was 36%. On the other hand, the female Indian students scored only 9% "yes" (as opposed to 24% nationally) on the following question: "I need to plan my time better." Moreover, the female Indian students scored 48% (as opposed to 73% nationally) on this question: "I tend to put things off much more than most students." Thus, it would seem that budgeting time would be an important consideration for female Indian students.

The area of emotional problems provided some of the most interesting results to interpret. The male Indian students produced the highest average score (4.08) on this section, largely as the result of the answers they gave to four questions - as a group they scored about 15% above the national average. The four questions are: "My studies cause me a lot of worry;" "Often some thought or idea keeps coming to me, and I can’t stop thinking about it;" "I am under a lot of tension when I study;" and "Sometimes I can’t do my best on examinations because I am so nervous and tense." Such results seem to indicate that male Indian students probably do not suffer as much as the average students from test anxiety or study stress. Conversely, both the male and female white students at Northern Montana probably do suffer from test anxiety because they scored at a 23% level on the last question about being nervous and tense for examinations (as opposed to a national level of 47%).

Although the male Indian students scored highest in the emotional problems area, the female Indian students scored the lowest (2.70 compared to a national average of 3.53). This lowest score derives primarily from the answers to two questions: "My studies cause me a lot of worry" and "I get so upset about little things that I can’t study." For both of these questions, the female Indian students scored about 20% below the national average. These responses may be connected to the apparent problems in time budgeting, but a cause and effect relationship remains only speculative.

The overall results of this study can produce some limited inferences about the study habits and attitudes of Indian college students. First, the motivation for male Indian students may not be clear and this can affect how hard they study. On the other hand, male Indian students do not seem to suffer very much from test anxiety or study stress. Second, female Indian students may have some problems in budgeting time and some emotional problems related to worrying about studying. Third, Indian and white students from primarily rural backgrounds (and consequently small high schools) are probably not experienced or skilled in taking

notes in lecture situations. However, this area needs more research and study before such conclusions can be definitely applied to all Indian college students because study habits and attitudes may vary widely from location to location or tribe to tribe.

1. See the following studies as examples: Anderson, Brooks, et al, "A Comparative Study in Estimating Time," Journal of American Indian Education (JAIE), 19, No. 3 (May, 1980), pp. 1-4; Cassel, Russell N., and Richard A. Sanders, "A Comparative Analysis of Scores from Two Leadership Tests for Apache Indian and Anglo American Youth," Journal of Education Research, 55, No. I (September, 1961), pp. 19-23; Deissler, Kenneth L., "A Study of South Dakota Indian Achievement Problems," JAIE, 1, No. 3 (May, 1962), pp. 19-21; Heaps, Richard A., and Stanley G. Morrill, "Comparing the Self-Concepts of Navajo and White High School Students," JAIE, 18, No. 3 (May, 1979), pp. 12-14; Lloyd, David 0., "Comparison of Standardized Test Results of Indian and Non-Indian in an Integrated School System," JAIE, 1, No. I (June, 1961), pp. 8-16; Reboussin, Roland, and Joel W. Goldstein, "Achievement Motivation in Navaho and White Students," American Anthropologist, 58, (June, 1966), 740; Snider, J. G., "Achievement Test Performance of Acculturated Indian Children," Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 7, No. 1 (March, 1961), pp. 39-41; Thompson, Hildegard, "A Survey of Factors Contributing to the Success or Failure of Indian Students at Northern Arizona University," Indian Education, November 1, 1966.

2. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970.

Thomas M. Sawyer is Special Services Counselor/Instructor and volunteer English instructor at Northern Montana College (Havre, MT 59501). He received his B.A. degree at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio; his M.A. degree at Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti; and his Ph.D. at Kent State University. He has taught English at Northern Montana, Kent and Eastern Michigan, and in Brussels, Belgium.