International International Multidisciplinary Multidisciplinary e-journal e Journal / Shahwar Fatima Zaidi ISSN (79-84) 2277-4262 Construction of Guidance Need Inventory at Graduate Level Shahwar Fatima Zaidi Department Of Education, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh. Paper Received on: 05/04/2012 Paper Reviewed on: 15/05/2012 Paper Accepted on: 25/05/2012 Abstract Guidance is the assistance given to individual for making intelligent choices and adjustments. Guidance is most important for total development of the personality of students whether studying in schools or colleges. The guidance personnel and counselor can only help the students when they know the guidance needs of the students. So it is essential to understand the guidance needs of the students. A counselor can only provide the guidance related to the particular needs. Here it is important to tall about the various form of guidance needs require by the students. They are educational needs, vocational needs, personal needs, social needs and emotional needs. Many tools have been constructed to know the problems of students studying in secondary and senior secondary level but none of the scale or test have been constructed yet. Therefore the investigator constructed the guidance needs inventory for graduate students especially of B.A, B.Sc and B.Com. The questionnaire which is based upon the needs of guidance in the areas such as educational, vocational, personal, social, emotional etc is specifically know as standardized test or guidance needs inventory. In the present study the investigator kept in mind the specific objectives of guidance at graduate level. It includes detailed analysis of the problems of college going students. For this purpose, 600 graduate students, 300 males and 300 female studying in B.A, B.Com, B.Sc from Aligarh Colleges under Aligarh Muslim University have taken. Keywords: Need Inventory, Graduate Level. Introduction Guidance need inventory was constructed by the researcher in a research study conducted to recognize the guidance needs of graduate students. Guidance tools are less in number to assess the guidance needs of the students studying in different courses of graduation i.e. Arts, Science and Commerce. Therefore, the researcher constructed the GNI to www.shreeprakashan.com Vol-I, Issue-V, May-2012 Page - 79
know the guidance needs of the students so that personal guidance can be given to them to solve their particular problems. The GNI attempts to structure the need system of an individual student so that the degree to which the school or its guidance system provides satisfaction for each need type may be measured. First of all structure of human needs was developed by Maslow (1954). He categorized human needs in five parts which are arranged in hierarchical order so that higher order needs become aroused only after lower order needs have been satisfied or partially satisfied. Before that, Murray (1938) pioneering work for the identification and classification of needs into two broad categories- Primary (Viscerogenic) and secondary (Psychogenic) is worth citing. He described primary needs as an individual s physical satisfaction, the secondary needs are related with the mental or emotional satisfactions such as need for achievement, recognition, status, power and affection. Shipley and Verroff (1952) measured the need for power. Horrocks Sharma (1969) found that the intensity of needs differs in the various stages of adolescences. Palsane (1969) studied the need and problems of 900 college students. Muray (1977) conducted study on 1583 rural and urban students, and found that there is variation in needs and problems due to high and low SES. NEED TOOLS (INSTRUMENTS) Assessment of individual s needs is measured with the help of self-assessment tools. Various measures of self-assessment have been developed over the year by the different scholars. Few are described as follows:martin (1969) studied the needs of engineering, pre law and premedical students with Adjective Check List (ACL) and the findings were that only lawyers had need scores which totally differentiated them from the average. Other tools of selfassessment are the Self-Esteem Inventory (SEI), self-appraised scale and Bledsoe Self- Concept Scale. But the most appropriate and recent need assessment measure is a scale developed by Waters and Darrells (1973) as a type of their job attitude questionnaire. This scale consists of 13 items and measures all, except the lowest order (i.e. physiological) which is under Maslow Need Categories. These items are in the form of asking the respondents for the characteristics given, (a) how much (need) is there now, and (b) how much (need) of it should be. Responses to both parts of each item were made on a 7- items scale. This scale help the investigator to find not only the need existence scores but also obtained need fulfillment scores by subtracting the response to part (b) from the part (a). Waters and Darell included the need categories such as Security (3-items), Esteems (3-items), Autonomy (4- items), Self-actualization (3-items) and 3 non- categorized items. The administration of this www.shreeprakashan.com Vol-I, Issue-V, May-2012 Page - 80
scale is bases on that these items can be used to differentiate higher order and lower order need satisfaction, and that overall job satisfaction is eventually a function of higher order needs. Review of these measures indicates that mostly these tools were developed and used on the population of those who are employed and are in several jobs. None of the guidance tools was available which could be assess the guidance needs of the students who are studying in graduation under different streams such as science, arts and commerce. Therefore, the guidance needs inventory have been constructed. GUIDANCE NEED CATEGORIES: The guidance need inventory is a tool or instrument which can be used to identify the type and strength of guidance needs of an individual students in five areas, namely (i) Educational (ii) Vocational (iii) Personal (iv) Social (v) Emotional. Defined operationally, (i) Educational needs of guidance refer to the preparation of an individual for living in a complex world consisting of formal institutions which prepare an individual student for life by bringing about an all round development of his personality. Twenty four items (S.No. 1to 24) if the guidance need inventory measure the strength of educational needs of the guidance, (ii) vocational guidance need means the need to know about and prepare for the world of work and find a place for oneself in society with a view of achieving self-fulfillment. Six items (S.No 25 to 30) of the guidance need inventory measure the strength of vocational guidance need. (iii) Personal guidance needs are the satisfactions that can possibly be brought about by the college guidance personal by providing to the pupils about their physical fitness, hours of study and rest. Eighteen items (S.No 31 to 58) of the guidance need inventory measure the strength of personal guidance. (iv) Social guidance refers to the availability of congenial social environment of college consisting of companions, where they meet and work with each other and experience a kind of social achievement. Seventeen items (S.No 59 to 75) of guidance need inventory measure the strength of social guidance. (v) Emotional guidance refer to those personal wants that are related with an individual s emotional satisfactions that are provided by guidance personal. Fifteen items (S.No 76 to 90) of the guidance need inventory measure that strength of this category of need. ITEMS OF THE GNI: www.shreeprakashan.com Vol-I, Issue-V, May-2012 Page - 81
In the beginning 120 items were enlisted, these items were submitted along with guidance needs and dimensions to the experts for classifying into the above mentioned five need areas. In the light of judgements and suggestions of the judges, some of the items were modified and 92 items were selected. In this way content validity of the inventory was ensured. FORMAT OF THE ITEMS: Each need item of the GNI consist of asking the respondent to place a tick mark ( ) against one of the five multiple-choice answers with a response and scoring pattern given below: Highly true (HT) has weightage of 5 ; Mostly true (MT) has weightage of 4 ; Quite True (QT) has weightage of 3 ; Least True (LT) has weightage of 2 ; and Not true (NT) has weightage of 1 ; The GNI needs half an hour for answering 92 items. The last page is left blank for noncategorized items where the respondent may mention any other need felt by him which is not covered by the GNI. All the need items are divided into form of positive and negative statement. Higher scores are an indication of more need and low scores on the inventory are an indication of less need. RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY This internal consistency reliability was estimated to be 0.99 by administering it to a group of 600 students. Content validity was ensured through method of selection and classification of items by experts in the concerned field. USE OF GNI: The GNI can be used for personal guidance of students in group or individual setting. The GNI can be used in research where the scores on fine guidance need areas can be used either separately or collectively. NORMATIVE DATA: The GNI was administrated on 600 graduate students of different streams i.e. B.Sc, B.com and B.A. drawn from AMU College for girls and Aligarh Muslim University of Aligarh city www.shreeprakashan.com Vol-I, Issue-V, May-2012 Page - 82
whom were divided according to streams B.Sc., B.com and B.A. the results, thus obtained are being presented below; Subjects of study and guidance needs: Table I (i) Mean and SD guidance need scores of pupils studying science and commerce subjects. Sub-Samples Compared Guidance Need Science (200) Commerce (200) M SD M SD 1 Educational 88.82 16.48 92.11 12.84 2 Vocational 26.88 5.43 28.13 4.48 3 Personal 106.11 25.60 104.50 20.35 4 Social 64.01 18.23 61.00 13.24 5 Emotional` 59.76 14.15 56.08 11.51 Table II (ii) Mean guidance need scores of pupils studying science and Arts Sub-Samples Compared Guidance Need Science (200) Arts (200) M SD M SD 1 Educational 88.82 16.48 100.93 12.84 2 Vocational 26.88 5.43 29.40 4.55 3 Personal 106.11 25.60 121.03 19.41 4 Social 64.01 18.23 72.02 11.62 5 Emotional` 59.76 14.15 64.85 8.84 Table III (iii) Mean guidance need scores of pupils studying commerce and arts Sub-Samples Compared Guidance Need Commerce (200) Arts (200) M SD M SD www.shreeprakashan.com Vol-I, Issue-V, May-2012 Page - 83
1 Educational 92.11 12.84 100.93 12.28 2 Vocational 28.13 4.48 29.40 4.55 3 Personal 104.50 20.35 121.03 19.41 4 Social 61.00 13.24 72.02 11.62 5 Emotional` 56.08 11.51 64.85 8.84 In this way the guidance need scores of other group can also compared and norms developed. REFERENCES: 1. Garret, HE. (1981); statistics in psychology and education, Vakils, Feffer and Simons ltd, Bombay. 2. Grewal, J.S. (1990); guidance need inventory manual, national Psychological corporation, Agra. 3. Martins, John. J (1971); Psychological needs of Engineering, pre-low, medical and undecided college freshmen. Journal of college student personal, Vol.12, No,5. 4. Maslow, A.H. (1970). Motivation and personality, Harper & Row, Newyork. 5. Muley, R.S. (1971). A study of needs and problems of adolescents, University Training College, Nagpur. 6. Murray, A.H. (1938); Explorations in personality, Oxford University press, Newyork. 7. Palsane, M.N. (1969); Some problem and perceptions of college students, education and Psuchology review. 8. Sharma, Meena (1979); A study of guidance need secondary school students, unpublished M.Ed dissertation, Bhopal University, Bhopal. 9. Shilpley, T.E. and Veroff, J.A. (1952); projective measure of need for affiliation, Journal of experimental Psychology. www.shreeprakashan.com Vol-I, Issue-V, May-2012 Page - 84