Date of Award:

5-1977

Document Type:

Dissertation

Degree Name:

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department:

Sociology and Anthropology

Department name when degree awarded

Sociology

Committee Chair(s)

Michael B. Toney

Committee

Michael B. Toney

Committee

Yun Kim

Committee

William Stinner

Committee

Therel Black

Committee

Bradley Parlin

Committee

Clifford Craig

Abstract

This study deals with a comparison between rural, urban, and metropolitan students as to their migration intentions and factors associated with their migration intentions. The study is based on the initial stage of a larger longitudinal panel study of 2,500 high school seniors in public high schools in the state of Utah in 1975. Survey research was the principal method of investigation. Stratified random sample was used for choosing the students and administered questionnaire was used to collect the information. Proportions and crosstabulations were the statistical techniques used in the analysis with chi square and gamma as the statistics for measuring differences and associations.

As to plans, career preference, migration intentions, and the factors associated with migration intentions, it was observed that there are more differences than similarities between the rural, urban, and metropolitan students. With respect to plans after graduation, it was found that the majority of the students intended to go to college. The majority of the students also indicated that professional work is their long-run career preference. Metropolitan students chose college and professional careers slightly more than rural and urban students. With respect to migration intentions after graduation, a larger proportion of rural respondents intend to migrate followed by urban and then metropolitan. Intrastate migration intentions are the pattern of the rural respondents, while interstate are the pattern for the metropolitan students. For those who intend to migrate within state, intrametropolitan counties are the pattern for the metropolitan respondents, while inter-counties are the pattern for the rural and urban students. With respect to long-run migration intentions, it was observed that students' choice of residence after graduation may not be the same as that place where they intend to live most of the remainder of their lives.

Several factors were hypothesized to be associated with students' migration intentions. Some of these factors were found to have higher degrees of associations with students' migration intentions than others. Also, the degree and direction of association for most of the factors were observed to vary with respect to the students' area of residence. This indicates that most of these factors are conditionally associated with the students' migration intentions. In other words, the place of residence--rural, urban, metropolitan--seems to play a major part in influencing the degree, significance, and direction of association between these factors and students' migration intentions.

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