The first course in accounting: students’ perceptions and their effect on the decision to major in accounting

J. of Acc. Ed. 18 (2000) 63±78

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The ®rst course in accounting: students' perceptions and their e€ect on the decision to major in accounting Marshall A. Geiger a,*, Suzanne M. Ogilby b a

E. C. Robins School Of Business, University of Richmond, 28 Westhampton Way, Richmond, VA 23173, USA b School of Business Administration, California State University Ð Sacramento, 6000 J Street, Sacramento, CA 95819, USA Received in revised form April 2000; accepted July 2000

Abstract Little empirical evidence exists regarding students' perceptions of the ®rst course in accounting and the e€ect of these perceptions on deciding whether or not to major in accounting. The purpose of this study is to begin examining student perceptions regarding the ®rst accounting course and how those perceptions relate to selection of accounting as a major. The study separately examines initial perceptions and changes in perceptions over the semester for intended accounting and non-accounting majors, and assesses the association of individual accounting instructors with changed student perceptions. We then examine the relationship between perceptual changes, ®nal grades, and individual instructors on decisions to major in accounting. Responses from 331 introductory ®nancial accounting students from two universities indicate that while intended accounting majors perceived the course more favorably than non-accounting majors at the beginning and end of the semester, both groups exhibited relatively positive attitudes toward the course. However, these attitudes were similarly less favorable by the end of the course for both groups. We also found evidence of the important role individual instructors play regarding changing student perceptions and selection of accounting as a major. The analyses for selection of accounting as a major indicate that the decision depended on initially intending to major in accounting, performance in the ®rst course, and individual instructors, but not on changes in perception regarding the ®rst course. # 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-804-287-1923; fax: +1-804-289-8878. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (M.A. Geiger), [email protected] (S.M. Ogilby). 0748-5751/00/$ - see front matter # 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S0748-5751(00)00011-7

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1. Introduction The importance of the ®rst course in accounting for educating accounting and other business majors has been discussed by several groups within the accounting profession, including the Accounting Education Change Commission (AECC, 1992), the American Accounting Association (AAA, 1986) and the major accounting ®rms (Arthur Andersen & Co. et al., 1989). Individual accounting educators have also discussed the role of the introductory course in the accounting and business curriculum (e.g. Baldwin & Ingram, 1991; Cherry & Reckers, 1983; Pincus, 1997; Vangermeersch, 1997). The importance of this ®rst course lies in its ability to both present useful accounting information that can lead to better decision-making for all business majors, and attract, or discourage, individuals from becoming accounting majors. The AECC has also argued that the ®rst course in accounting is critically important for its potential impact on student perceptions regarding the accounting profession and an individual's chances for success as an accounting professional: The course shapes their perceptions of (1) the profession, (2) the aptitudes and skills needed for successful careers in accounting, and (3) the nature of career opportunities in accounting. These perceptions a€ect whether the supply of talent will be sucient for the profession to thrive (pp. 1±2). The AECC's position on the importance of the introductory accounting course appears to be based, in part, on the potential of this course to a€ect students' perceptions Ð or what has generally been referred to as the a€ective domain of education (Krathwohl, Bloom & Masia, 1964; Wilson, 1988). To date, however, no empirical evidence exists as to what perceptions students actually hold toward the ®rst course in accounting and the impact of their perceptions on selection of accounting as a major. For example, before entering the course, do students believe that the course will be useful? Rewarding? Boring? Do intended accounting majors perceive the ®rst accounting course di€erently than their non-accounting peers? Do students' perceptions about the course change over the semester? Do students with positive changes in perception choose to become accounting majors? This study begins to empirically investigate student perceptions regarding the ®rst accounting course, including changes in those perceptions throughout the semester. The study also examines changes in perception across individual instructors and the relationship of perceptual changes with students' decision to major, or not major, in accounting. 2. Prior literature A signi®cant number of studies have been conducted to address various aspects of the introductory accounting course. For example, studies have examined the determinants of student performance in the ®rst accounting course (Doran, Bouillon, & Smith, 1991; Eskew & Faley, 1988; Wooten, 1998), the possible e€ect of gender on

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accounting course performance (Buckless, Lipe & Ravenscroft, 1991), and the prediction of student performance in upper-level accounting courses based, in part, on performance in the introductory courses (Bernardi & Bean, 1999; Danko, Duke & Franz, 1992). There has also been a sizable amount of research and discussion on the appropriate content of the ®rst accounting course (e.g. AECC, 1992; Baldwin & Ingram, 1991; Cherry & Mintz, 1996;Cherry & Reckers, 1983; Pincus, 1997; Vangermeersch, 1997). The summaries of accounting education research presented by Williams, Tiller, Herring and Schneiner (1988), Rebele, Sout and Hassell (1991) and Rebele, Apostolou, Buckless, Hassell, Paquette and Stout (1998), however, reveal that no empirical study has performed a direct assessment of accounting students' perceptions regarding any individual accounting course. Nor has any study performed an assessment of the relationship between course perceptions and major selection. A study by Friedlan (1995) asked Canadian accounting students, both at the beginning and end of the course, the perceived importance of 12 skills on their ability to perform well in introductory accounting, and the importance of 13 skills for performance as accounting practitioners. While the Friedlan study assessed students' perceptions of the skills needed to perform well academically and professionally, it did not directly assess students' perceptions of the introductory accounting course itself. There has also been some empirical research on how various categories of instructors (e.g. accounting, business) view the ®rst course in accounting (e.g. Cherry & Mintz, 1996) and on students' general perception of accounting, accountants, and the accounting profession (e.g. Cohen & Hanno, 1993; Corey, 1992; Paolillo & Estes, 1982). However, studies involving students' perceptions of accounting typically ask students one or only a few attitudinal/perceptual questions at the end of the course. These studies then compare responses to these few items across groups of students exposed to di€erent pedagogy during the course (e.g. Daroca & Nourayi, 1994; Hill, 1998; Saudagaran, 1996). Accordingly, these prior studies have incorporated attitudinal questions, but have not adequately addressed student attitudes. Additionally, several studies have examined whether the introductory accounting course can attract ``the best and the brightest'' students to accounting (e.g. Adams, Pryor & Adams, 1994; Baldwin & Ingram, 1991; Inman, Wentzler & Wicker, 1989; Nelson & Deines, 1995; Riordan, St. Pierre & Matoney, 1996). Riordan et al. examined whether the introductory course appeared to attract or retain quality students (as measured by GPA). They found that the mean GPA of intended accounting majors was higher than that of non-accounting students before the introductory course, and that students transferring into accounting after the course had higher GPAs than those transferring out. These results suggest that the introductory course may retain quality students and may actually attract higher performing students to major in accounting. A study by Cohen and Hanno (1993) used the theory of planned behavior to predict and explain the choice of accounting as a major. Their results indicate that students chose not to major in accounting because they perceived it to be too numberoriented and boring. Intended accounting majors were also found to place more emphasis than intended non-accounting majors on high performance in the introductory

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courses in their selection of a major. In a related study, Stice, Swain and Worsham (1997) categorized students as being ``quali®ed'' or ``unquali®ed'' to major in accounting based on performance in the introductory course. Their results indicate that course performance was not signi®cantly related to the decision to major in accounting when examining just the ``quali®ed'' (i.e. high performing) students. That is, just because a student performs well in introductory accounting does not mean that they will choose to major in accounting. Their results are consistent with those of Adams et al. (1994) who found that students' responses to the item ``genuine interest in the ®eld,'' as opposed to actual course performance, was the most signi®cant factor in deciding to major in accounting. However, none of these prior studies present a direct examination of student perceptions toward the introductory accounting course and how these perceptions relate to the decision to major in accounting. Stice et al. argue that while performance may serve as a screening device, future research should focus on identifying non-performance factors that a€ect the decision to major in accounting. Further, no study in accounting has examined the possible di€erential e€ect of individual instructors on students' decisions to major in accounting. Although prior researchers (e.g. Daroca & Nourayi, 1994) have inferred that there may be a di€erential impact of individual faculty members on introductory accounting students, this conjecture has not been tested empirically. 2.1. A€ective domain Students' perceptions regarding the ®rst course in accounting can generally be considered to be part of the larger a€ective domain of education (Krathwohl et al. 1964). While student learning occurs in both the cognitive and a€ective domains (Bloom, Engelhart, Furst, Hill & Krathwohl, 1956; Wilson, 1988), the a€ective domain encompasses learning objectives that ``emphasize a feeling tone, an emotion, or degree of acceptance or rejection'' (Krathwohl et al., 1964, p. 7). Such learning objectives are often expressed as interests, attitudes, perceptions, values, emotions, or appreciation. While these objectives di€er from cognitive domain objectives (e.g. the aspects of knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation), they are nonetheless closely related to learning (Bloom, Hastings & Madaus, 1971) and to the selection of a major area of study (Adams et al., 1994). In fact, Munsterberg (1914) argued almost a century ago that: The chief motive of human actions lies in feelings and emotions. If education is to secure certain actions, the safest way will be by developing certain likes and dislikes, pleasures and displeasures, enthusiasms and aversions (p. 196). According to Krathwohl et al. (1964), the a€ective domain is comprised of ®ve stages and begins at the level of receiving or attending in which the student is simply sensitized to the existence of a particular phenomenon. The second level of the hierarchy is responding, in which the student is somewhat committed to the phenomenon so that he or she will pursue involvement in it. Valuing, the third level of

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the hierarchy, indicates that the student believes the phenomenon has worth. The fourth and ®fth levels of the hierarchy are attained as the student has increasingly positive internalized values relating to multiple phenomena and begins the process of organizing those values and integrating them into a total philosophy. While the last two a€ect levels, organizing and integrating, are important for higher order learning within any discipline, their assessment in introductory accounting students, including intended accounting majors, is somewhat premature. Accordingly, this study presents a general assessment of the ®rst three a€ect levels and attempts to examine students' general perceptions, values, expectations, and attitudes about the ®rst course in accounting and how these perceptions are related to the decision to major in accounting. Based on the existing literature discussed in this section, we examine the following research questions in this study: Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5

What are students' initial perceptions regarding the introductory accounting course? Do intended accounting majors have di€erent initial perceptions of the introductory accounting course compared to non-accounting majors? Do students' perceptions of the introductory course change over the semester? Do changes in students' perceptions di€er across individual instructors? How are students' perceptions and course performance related to the decision to major in accounting?

3. Method 3.1. Instrument The instrument used to assess students' general perceptions toward the ®rst accounting course was a self-report, paper and pencil questionnaire administered during class in the ®rst and last weeks of the introductory ®nancial accounting course. The questionnaire contained ten statements regarding students' perceptions of the course across a variety of a€ect dimensions. Questionnaire items cover varying aspects of the ®rst three a€ect levels (Krathwohl et al., 1964), and were adapted from questions used in an earlier pilot study on introductory accounting students (Watkins & Ogilby, 1996). We also included an item regarding students' perceptions of how important their instructors are in a€ecting their opinion of the course. In addition, as an overall re¯ection of students' perceptions of their ability to do well in the course, instruments at the beginning and end of the course asked students their expected grade. The list of items presented to students at the beginning of the semester is presented in Table 1. Students responded to the 10 perception statements on a ®ve-point Likert scale ranging from strongly agree (``5'') to strongly disagree (``1''). Students indicated their expected course grade for the ®nal item, which was then converted to a ®ve-point scale.

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Table 1 Perception items Ð initial questionnaire 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

This course will help me to do well in my future business courses. (COURSES) This course will help me do well in my career. (CAREER) Doing well in this course would be personally rewarding. (REWARDING) I expect to spend more time on this course than my other courses. (TIME) I am looking forward to this course. (LOOK/ENJOY) This course will be dicult. (DIFFICULTY) This course will be boring. (BORING) I am highly motivated to do well in this course. (MOTIVATED) I expect to learn a lot in this class. (EXPLEARN) The instructor will a€ect my opinion of the usefulness of this course. (INSTRUCTOR) What is your expected grade in the course? (EXPGRADE)

The end-of-semester instrument contained the same items as presented in Table 1, except that items were reworded where necessary to re¯ect past tense. The only exception was that item number ®ve (LOOK/ENJOY) was modi®ed from ``I am looking forward to this course'' at the beginning of the semester to ``I have enjoyed this course'' at the end of the semester. Irrespective of the arguments presented by the AECC (1992) concerning the general business usefulness of the ®rst accounting course, the ®rst two items (i.e. COURSES and CAREER) were anticipated to be perceived as more valuable, a priori, by students intending to be accounting majors. The remaining items were felt to be more neutral with respect to selected major and to be potentially equally applicable to all students. However, due to the natural tendency of students to perceive a course in their major more positively than non-majors, we separately examine responses over the semester for accounting and non-accounting majors. The ®rst instrument also collected demographic data such as gender, GPA, SAT scores, and intended major as of the start of the course. Since the vast majority of students in the study were ®rst semester sophomores, some students (n=77) had not yet decided on a speci®c business major at the time of ®rst administration.1 These undecided students were classi®ed as non-accounting majors, and to a large extent represent the pool of students intended to be in¯uenced by the ®rst accounting course to possibly consider accounting as a major (AECC, 1992; Cohen & Hanno, 1993). We then examined subsequent student records for evidence of major selection immediately after the course. University records are available by semester and indicate the intended major of the student, which was required for registration purposes. Accordingly, we were generally able to identify subsequent selection of a major for students immediately following the course, including those originally undecided at the beginning of the course.

1

t-Test comparisons between these undecided business majors and the other non-accounting majors revealed no signi®cant di€erences (p<0.05) on any of the variables reported in the study.

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3.2. Subjects Participants in this study were students enrolled in the introductory ®nancial accounting course o€ered during the fall semester at two medium-sized public universities in the United States. Universities from two di€erent geographic areas (i.e. east and west coasts) were included to get a broader representation of accounting students in the United States. All sections of introductory ®nancial accounting at the two universities participated in the study. Additionally, eight di€erent instructors (four from each university) taught these students, and all used a fairly ``traditional'' lecture/discussion format.2 Neither university used ``mass lecture'' sections during our study. While the content covered in these courses was typical of an introductory ®nancial accounting course, and coordinated within each university, faculty had the usual latitude in material sequencing, presentation, emphasis, assignments, and student testing and evaluation. In order to assess changes in perceptions and the impact of perceptions on selecting a major, students that did not respond to instruments both at the beginning and end of the semester were eliminated. We also eliminated students for which we could not obtain either ®nal grades or selection of major data after the course was completed (e.g. student received an incomplete or withdrew from school). These requirements resulted in 331 students (117 and 206 from the two universities) who properly completed both instruments and for which all data were available.3 Of the 331 students, 175 were males, 45 indicated at the beginning of the semester that they intended to major in accounting, and 53 students selected accounting as their major immediately after the course. 4. Results Table 2 presents demographic data for intended accounting and non-accounting majors at the beginning of the course. As seen in the table, there was no di€erence in Table 2 Demographic variables

a

GPA SAT-mathb SAT-verbalb a b

Accounting majors

Non-accounting majors

t-Test p value

2.85 577.5 454.8

2.84 535.8 487.1

0.91 0.01 0.01

Based on 38 and 255 accounting and non-accounting students, respectively, who answered this question. Based on 30 and 151 accounting and non-accounting students, respectively, who answered this question.

2 One of the researchers taught a section (n=37 students) of the introductory accounting course included in the study. Exclusion of these students from the analyses does not alter the results presented in the paper. 3 t-Test comparisons between the two universities were performed on the demographic variables. The only signi®cant di€erence ( p<0.05) found was that students at one university had slightly higher mean GPAs (2.98 vs. 2.75).

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overall GPA between accounting and non-accounting majors, but accounting majors had higher SAT-math scores and lower SAT-verbal scores ( p<0.01) than non-accounting majors. 4.1. Q1 and Q2 Ð initial perceptions of intended accounting and non-accounting majors Table 3 presents a summary of responses to the 10 perception items, as well as to the question asking the student's expected grade for the course. Results are presented separately in the table for the intended accounting and non-accounting majors. An examination of the ®rst two columns of Table 3 shows that the overall mean responses of both the intended accounting and non-accounting majors is generally above the neutral point of 3.0 (based on our ®ve-point scale) for the positive items and under 3.0 for the negative (i.e. BORING) item. Results related to research question one, therefore, indicate that both intended accounting and non-accounting majors had a favorable initial perception of the introductory accounting course. To more directly address the second research question regarding perceptual differences between intended accounting and non-accounting majors, we performed 11 separate unbalanced ANCOVA models using the initial responses to the 11 perceptual items as the dependent variable, accounting/non-accounting major indications as the classi®cation variable, and GPA as the covariate (to control for general academic

Table 3 Summary of students' mean perceptionsa,b Beginning of semester

End of semester

Change

Variable

Accounting Non-accounting Accounting Non-accounting Accounting Non-accounting

COURSES CAREER REWARDING TIME LOOK/ENJOY DIFFICULTY BORING MOTIVATED EXPLEARN INSTRUCTOR EXPGRADEc

4.76 4.75 4.82 3.73 4.14 3.74 2.74 4.49 4.57 4.14 3.73

a

4.40** 4.27** 4.49** 3.36** 3.77** 3.77 2.75 4.22** 4.33* 3.96 3.61

4.51yy 4.61 4.33yy 3.84 4.12 4.00 3.94yy 4.24yy 4.39 4.10 3.23yy

4.25yy** 4.01yy** 3.97yy** 3.83yy 3.93yy 4.02yy 3.84yy 3.85yy** 4.12yy** 4.01 3.02yy

ÿ0.25 ÿ0.14 ÿ0.49 0.11 ÿ0.02 0.26 1.20 ÿ0.25 ÿ0.18 ÿ0.04 ÿ0.50

ÿ0.15 ÿ0.26 ÿ0.48 0.47* 0.16 0.25 1.09 ÿ0.37 ÿ0.21 0.05 ÿ0.59

Accounting majors, n=45; non-accounting majors, n=286. See Table 1 for an explanation of the variables. c Based on a scale of 1 to 5. y Signi®cantly di€erent than the beginning of semester responses based on within-persons t-test at p<.05. yy Signi®cantly di€erent than the beginning of semester responses based on within-persons t-test at p<0.01.  Signi®cantly di€erent than the accounting majors at p<0.05.  Signi®cantly di€erent than the mean for accounting majors at p<0.01. b

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ability).4 The results of these models are reported in Table 3. As expected, accounting majors initially perceived the course more positively than non-accounting majors on seven of the 11 perception items. With the exception of non-signi®cant di€erences for the DIFFICULTY, BORING, INSTRUCTOR and EXPGRADE items, the accounting majors perceived the introductory accounting course in a generally more positive light than did the non-accounting majors at the start of the semester. 4.2. Q3 Ð changes in perception The third and fourth columns of Table 3 present mean results as of the end of the semester, and the last two columns of the table indicate the mean changes in responses over the course of the semester. Results are presented separately for intended accounting and non-accounting majors. To examine the third research question, a within-persons t-test was run for each of the 11 items presented in Table 3 for the beginning-of-semester versus the end-of-semester responses for the combined group of accounting and non-accounting majors. This t-test procedure matches endof-semester responses to beginning-of-semester responses for each individual to determine if individuals have changed their perceptions over the semester. The results for all 331 students indicate that, with the exception of the INSTRUCTOR analysis, students did generally change their perceptions over the semester ( p<0.01). As shown in Table 3, when the sample is partitioned and separately analyzed according to intended major, identical change results were found for the non-accounting majors (i.e. di€erences on all items except Instructor), but a few di€erences were noted for the group of intended accounting majors compared to the aggregate results. Only ®ve of the eleven items (i.e. COURSES, REWARDING, BORING, MOTIVATED and EXPGRADE) were signi®cantly ( p<0.05) changed over the semester for the accounting majors. The intended accounting majors were therefore relatively more stable in their perceptions regarding the introductory accounting course than were the non-accounting majors. Examining both the end-of-semester mean responses and changes in mean responses over the semester does, however, indicate that both groups of students generally had slightly less favorable perceptions of the introductory course at the end of the semester as compared to the beginning of the semester. To assess di€erences between accounting and non-accounting majors on ®nal perceptions, we again ran 11 separate unbalanced ANCOVA models, with GPA as the covariate, for the end-of-semester responses. We also performed a similar set of analyses in another set of 11 models using changes in perceptions as the dependent variable. Results of these models are reported in Table 3, both for the end of semester analyses and analyses of the change in perceptions over the semester. 4

The use of ``unbalanced'' ANCOVA models in this study adjusts for the di€erence in group size for the intended accounting (N=45) and intended non-accounting majors (N=286). Further, results of these analyses without the covariate were substantially the same as those reported in the paper with the covariate.

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As seen in columns three and four of Table 3, di€erences between intended accounting and non-accounting majors still existed at the end of the semester for ®ve of the seven items where di€erences were noted at the beginning of the semester. Further, columns ®ve and six indicate that the aggregate changes for the semester were relatively consistent between intended accounting and intended non-accounting majors. The only signi®cant di€erence in the amount of changed perceptions between the two groups was that the intended non-accounting majors increased their response to the TIME item signi®cantly more than the intended accounting majors ( p<0.05). Otherwise, the changes in perceptions over the semester were very similar between the two groups of students. Changes in responses to the BORING item represent the largest change in an item for the semester. The mean response for both groups at the end of the semester indicates that students generally ``agree'' (i.e. means of almost 4.0 on the ®ve-point scale) with the statement that the course was boring. The only item that became more favorable toward the end of the semester was the item for whether students looked forward to/enjoyed the course (LOOK/ENJOY). While intended accounting majors essentially remained stable on this item, the non-accounting majors indicated improvement in this area. Thus, while non-accounting students' perceptions regarding other aspects of the course decreased, they increased their response to the overall enjoyment question.5 4.3. Q4 Ð perception di€erences across instructors Our study involved a total of eight full-time accounting faculty Ð four from each institution. To examine the fourth research question regarding whether changes in student perceptions over the semester di€ered across individual faculty members, we used unbalanced ANCOVAs with instructor the independent variable6 and the change in perception on each of the items in Table 3 the dependent variable in 11 separate analyses. To control for changes being due to initial response level, we used students' initial response as a covariate in each of the 11 models.7 The results of the separate analyses are presented in Table 4. All ANCOVA models presented in Table 4 were signi®cant at conventional levels.8 The results provide fairly strong evidence that changes in students' perceptions did 5

The improvement in these scores may also be attributable to respondents indicating what they believe the researchers (and their teachers) wanted to hear Ð e.g. that they enjoyed the course, as well as being attributable to an overall indication of their satisfaction with both the course and their instructor. Future research is needed to resolve this seeming disparity in changed perceptions. 6 Each teacher was randomly assigned a number from 1 to 8. 7 Analyses without the covariate in the models produce results essentially the same as those presented in Table 4. Additionally, instead of controlling for initial perception positions, we ran the analyses using ®nal grades as the covariate. Results of these modi®ed analyses are also substantially the same as those presented in Table 4. 8 Separate ANCOVA analyses performed on just the non-accounting majors produced results substantively the same as those presented in Table 4. The small number of declared accounting majors for each instructor precluded a similar analysis on just the accounting majors.

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Table 4 Individual instructor in¯uences Ð summary of ANCOVA modelsa,b,c Dependent variabled

W/Initial position as covariate

Change in

Model F

Type III SS Teacher p-value

COURSES CAREER REWARDING TIME LOOK/ENJOY DIFFICULTY BORING MOTIVATED EXPLEARN INSTRUCTOR EXPGRADE

27.80 17.21 17.06 49.34 33.67 44.61 77.52 20.16 5.69 48.23 4.87

0.018 0.189 0.354 0.016 0.208 0.001 0.058 0.081 0.069 0.002 0.005

a

All majors, n=331. All models signi®cant at p<0.0001. c See Table 1 for an explanation of the variables. d The Type III SS p-value indicates the impact of adding the teacher variable to the model last, after the covariate is already included. b

di€er across the eight instructors. Speci®cally, all but three of the 11 models exhibit a signi®cant di€erence among instructors on changed perceptions over the semester at the 0.10 level, and ®ve of the 11 models indicate signi®cant di€erences between instructors at the 0.05 level. These results provide evidence regarding a relationship between individual instructors and changes in student perceptions during the ®rst accounting course. 4.4. Q5 Ð selection of accounting as a major To assess the last research question regarding the relationship between student perceptions and selection of accounting as a major, changes in perceptions for the semester were regressed on a student's decision to major in accounting (coded 0/1) immediately following the course. In order to account for the e€ect of a student's initial selection of major, possible course performance, and instructor in¯uences on their subsequent major selection, we included accounting major selection at the beginning of the semester (coded 0/1), actual ®nal grades, and the teacher indicator variable in the regression. Results of the logistic regressions are presented in Table 5. The regression results indicate that the most signi®cant ( p<0.05) predictors of students deciding to major in accounting after the introductory course were their initial selection of accounting as a major, their ®nal grade, their individual instructors, and whether students increased their perception of the usefulness of the course to their careers and their indications of boredom.

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Table 5 Logistic regression Ð selection of accounting majora,b Independent variable

Coecient

F-value

p-value

Intercept COURSES CAREER REWARDING TIME LOOK/ENJOY DIFFICULT BORING MOTIVATED EXP LEARN INSTRUCTOR FINAL GRADE INITIAL MAJOR TEACHER

ÿ2.406 ÿ0.016 0.970 0.295 ÿ0.149 0.016 ÿ0.099 0.441 0.179 ÿ0.093 ÿ0.208 0.327 3.646 ÿ0.491

20.746 0.002 7.796 0.995 0.475 0.004 0.227 4.822 0.423 0.077 0.873 8.354 48.663 16.593

0.0001 0.9621 0.0052 0.3185 0.4908 0.9505 0.6338 0.0281 0.5154 0.7808 0.3501 0.0038 0.0001 0.0001

a b

All majors, n=331. Model F=119.013; p-value=0.0001; df=13.

4.5. Additional analyses To assess whether students who did not ®nish the course had similar initial perceptions as those who did ®nish (i.e. a survivor bias in the data), we performed ttests comparing students used in the study with students for which we only have beginning-of-semester data (n=256).9 This is a crude comparison because some students in this latter group undoubtedly remained in the course, but did not attend the class in which the second questionnaire was administered. The results of the ttests indicate that these two groups were similar on all demographic variables, but that students not completing the second questionnaire were signi®cantly lower in their initial perceptions on the COURSES, CAREER, and LOOKING/ENJOY questions ( p<0.05). Thus, students not attending class at the end of the semester exhibited more negative perceptions of the introductory accounting course at the beginning of the semester. To further assess whether changes in student perceptions over the semester were a function of student aptitude, we correlated changes in responses over the semester for the 11 items with GPA (for the students providing that information). The results indicate that the only changes in perceptions that were signi®cantly correlated ( p<0.05) with GPA for the entire group of students were changes for the INSTRUCTOR, TIME, and EXPGRADE questions. The signi®cant negative correlation of GPA and the changes in INSTRUCTOR question indicate that lower GPA students had larger increases in response to the INSTRUCTOR item. The 9

Additionally, there were 72 students for which we have end-of-semester data and no beginning-ofsemester data.

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signi®cant positive correlation of GPA with the changes in TIME question indicates that higher GPA students had larger increases than lower GPA students in their perception of time spent on the course by the end of the semester. The signi®cant positive correlation of GPA with the changes in EXPGRADE question indicates that higher GPA students had smaller reductions than lower GPA students in their expected grade by the end of the semester. With the exception of these three items, overall changes in students' perceptions were not signi®cantly related to student GPA. To examine some possible causes of the general instructor e€ect found in our study, we ®rst identi®ed several instructor and course characteristics. Speci®cally, we identi®ed the gender of the instructor, what type of examinations they used (multiple-choice questions, problems, or both), whether the course was taught during the day or at night, how many times the course met a week, how many sections of the introductory course were being taught by the instructor that semester, and highest degree held (Masters or PhD). We then ran sets of t-tests for the dichotomous categories (e.g. male/female; day/night, etc.) and unbalanced ANCOVAS for categories with more than one classi®cation (e.g. type of examination, number of sections taught, etc.) on all 11 perceptual changes for the semester. The overall results of these additional analyses generally indicated no discernable pattern of changes in perception due to any speci®c instructor or course characteristic. While no signi®cant results ( p<0.05) were found for most analyses, the results for number of class meetings per week indicated that meeting three times a week signi®cantly increased the changes in perceived time (TIME) devoted to the class, as well as decreased the changes in perceived diculty (DIFFICULTY), compared with classes that met only twice a week. A further analysis of mean changes in perceptions for the 11 measures across the eight instructors indicated that the instructor associated with the highest degree of positive changes in perception (highest on four measures, second highest on two measures, and third highest on one measure) was a male instructor holding a masters degree that taught one section at night (twice a week) who used both multiple-choice and problem type questions on examinations. Similarly, a search for an instructor that was associated with the lowest degree of positive changes in perception indicated no clear selection. Several instructors were associated with the most negative changes in perception on two or three of the surveyed items, with a wide disparity of mean results across the instructors. Clearly, the examination of the causes of the signi®cant instructor association is not completed through this exploratory study. Future research is needed to assess possible instructor and course characteristics that may signi®cantly impact changes in students' perceptions about the introductory accounting course. Finally, we separately examined the selection of major decision for the initially undecided students. Of the 77 undecided students in our study, 10 subsequently decided to major in accounting after completing the introductory accounting course. We then repeated the logistic regression presented in Table 5 without the initial accounting selection variable, on just these 77 undecided students. Results of the regression indicate that the only signi®cant variables were the instructor variable ( p=0.0195) and the change in perception of boredom (P=0.0680). Again, after

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controlling for all other factors, the individual instructor is shown to have signi®cant association with the decision to major in accounting for these initially undecided business students. While the change in boredom is signi®cant, the sign on the coef®cient is negative, indicating that the undecided students subsequently deciding to major in accounting show smaller increases in boredom than those choosing not to major in accounting. 5. Conclusion and discussion This study empirically investigated students' perceptions of the ®rst accounting course. Although intended accounting majors perceived the course more positively than did non-accounting majors, our ®ndings generally indicate that both groups of students had fairly positive perceptions of the introductory accounting course across a number of dimensions. We did ®nd, however, that both accounting majors and non-accounting majors had diminished perceptions of the introductory course at the end of the semester compared to the beginning of the semester. The largest perceptual change over the semester was the students' increased indication of boredom with the course. We also found signi®cant variation in changed student perceptions across individual instructors, as well as for the selection of accounting as a major after the course is completed. Our results also indicate that student perceptual positions at the end of the course are generally not related to selection of accounting as a major, after controlling for course performance, instructor, and initial major selection. While requiring further con®rmatory research, our ®ndings of signi®cant individual instructor associations support the conjecture of Daroca and Nourayi (1994) and reinforces the need for accounting programs, as well as educational institutions, to be selective in their assignment of instructors to the ®rst accounting course (AECC, 1992). Since the introductory accounting course is often a student's ®rst, and potentially only, exposure to accounting, instructor assignment to this course is important, in part, because it can impact the supply of accounting majors to both an accounting program and the accounting profession. This study represents an initial attempt to gather information on the a€ective domain of student perceptions, and requires additional replication work to collaborate our ®ndings. Stout and Rebele (1996) point out that without appropriate replication, generalizing beyond the immediate study may be premature and inappropriate. Accordingly, while we included every student and faculty member involved with introductory accounting at two medium-sized institutions, our use of only two universities should be recognized as a limitation of the study. Finally, our study did not attempt to systematically vary the style or format of classroom presentation that students were exposed to in the introductory course. Nor did it assess individual instructors along any psychological or personal characteristic or dimension (i.e. cognitive or teaching style). Varying teaching methods between the ``traditional'' lecture/discussion format and other formats, such as casebased teaching, cooperative learning, and using multimedia as a presentation mode,

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would assist in the evaluation of student perceptions of the introductory course and the decision to major in accounting. Likewise, evaluating the impact of individual instructor characteristics on changing student perceptions appears to be warranted based on our ®ndings.

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