JOURNAL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS EDUCATION - National ...

What Impacts the Learning in Service Learning?
An Examination of Project Structure and Student Characteristics
Table 3.
Descriptive Statistics: The Educational Effectiveness Index Score
and Its Components
Components of the Index Obs. Mean Std. Dev. Min Max
Mastery of Course Material 79 3.58 1.15 1 5
Linkage of Course Concepts 79 3.86 1.07 1 5
Application of Course Concepts to Real
Situations
Development of a Deeper Understanding of
Course Material
Development of a Deeper Understanding of
Material Outside of the Course Relevant to
the Graduate Program
Note. *The reason the minimum value listed for the index is a 7 rather than a 5 is because no survey
respondent actually selected a 1 for each of the components of our educational effectiveness index.
use a scale, of 1 to 5, to rate how helpful the service-learning project was at
achieving this outcome. A 1 indicated that the project was not helpful, and a 5
indicated that the project was extremely helpful. Thus, index scores could range
from a minimum of 5 to a maximum of 25. Descriptive statistics for the
educational effectiveness index score and its components are included in Table 3.
(See Table 3.)
To examine which factors influence the educational outcomes of service
learning, we began by using ANOVA to test whether there were statistically
significant relationships between each of the factors we had hypothesized as
influencing the educational outcomes of service learning, and our educational
effectiveness index. Next, we conducted multiple regression analysis in order to
assess the relative contribution of different factors for explaining the educational
outcomes of service learning. The dependent variable in this regression equation
— the educational effectiveness index score — is modeled as a function of
project structure and student characteristics. Multiple regression enables us to
isolate the impact of each variable on educational outcomes, while holding other
variables constant.
For our multivariate analysis, we included only the significant factors from
the ANOVA results. A sensitivity analysis was performed, in order to compare
our streamlined model to a model that included all of the variables that our
ANOVA analysis showed as potentially influencing the educational outcomes of
service learning. We chose this more parsimonious model for a variety of
434 Journal of Public Affairs Education
79 4.09 0.95 1 5
78 3.83 1.10 1 5
79 4.08 0.93 1 5
Educational Effectiveness Index Score 77 19.45 4.58 7* 25