Persistência e evasão na educação a distância: examinando fatores explicativos

Abstract

This research is focused on the theme 'persistence and avoidance of students in distance education' and sought to identify the main factors that explain the persistence and avoidance of students in undergraduate distance courses, in order to propose and test a theoretical model. This is a predominantly quantitative study, and the research population is formed by students residing in any region of Brazil who have started an open distance learning course in administration and accounting sciences offered by private higher education institutions. For the measurement of the proposed theoretical model variables, it were adopted scales previously identified in the literature - the scale of Sales (2009) and Duan et al (2010). A logistic regression analysis was carried out to investigate the relationship between the independent variables and to identify the main predictors of the variable 'student (persistent / evaded) situation'. The results revealed that the global model fits the data, and no large variation was observed among the predictor variables of the model. There is evidence that, the more we evaluate learning and self-discipline support variables, the more students have to persist in the course (or not avoid). It was also found that an increase in the number of children makes it difficult to persist in the course, and also may influence the chance of avoidance occurring. The type of the chosen course was also explanatory. There is evidence that students in accounting sciences are more likely to be avoided compared to management students. And the family income variable seems to better predict the persistent group than the group of evaders. It was observed that an increase in income decreases the probability of avoidance occurring (or facilitates permanence).