Social factors and common group involvement of Texas Tech University students

A Worker Motivation Scale (WMS) was designed by Johnson, McDonald, and George (1985). This scale ranks an individual on his/her motivation for performing in a task oriented group. To evaluate its performance in scaling university students and the social group they belong to, the WMS was tested and correlated to general topics in group behavior. Hypotheses based on these statistical correlations were proposed, and were then supported or refuted. The WMS contained three subscales, on which a student scored high on one. The subscales included: (1) the Prominence Motivation (PM) person, who was motivated to be a leader in the group; (2) the Task Motivation (TM) person, who preferred that the group accomplish its goal or task; and (3) the Affiliation Motivation (AM) person, who enjoyed being a part of the group. It was hypothesized and supported that a PM student was likely to be a leader and felt he/she could change group opinion. It was also hypothesized and partially supported that the AM individual would feel pressure to conform to the group and would be influenced by the group. In addition, an exploratory factor analysis was done to describe the university student's motivation in social group participation in the university setting. Three factors were determined. The first factor was Affect Cohesion; in which the student had a high need for meeting emotional needs. The Amiability factor described the student's need for pleasantness. The Individualist factor included some of the disadvantages of being in a group. This thesis therefore introduced some new insights into why the university student belonged to social groups.