Morningness/Eveningness Trait as a Possible Predisposing Factor in Students Selecting their College Major
Open Access
- Author:
- Berlin, Emily A
- Area of Honors:
- Psychology
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Arts
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Frederick Martin Brown, Thesis Supervisor
Frederick Martin Brown, Thesis Supervisor
David A. Rosenbaum, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- circadian rhythms
morningness
eveningness
college major selection - Abstract:
- Many factors underlie college students’ selection of their major field of study, including personal, sociocultural, economic, and financial. This study tests whether an underlying personal biological trait, morningness/eveningness preferences, also influences this procedure. Biological rhythms, especially daily circadian rhythms, influence many internal cycles throughout organisms’ everyday living. Human circadian rhythms produce three daily activity preference types: some preferring mornings (M-Type), some evenings (E-Type), and most preferring neither (I-Type). Earlier data showed PSU students are generally evening-predisposed. For comparison, this study collected morningness/eveningness (M/E) survey information from 309 undergraduate students in specific majors: business, engineering, science, and mathematics fields. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 50 (mean = 21.4), and ranged in semester standing from 5th to 9th term, distributed as 11.7, 20.0, 6.2, 46.9, and 15.2 percent, respectively. Of the 309 that began the survey, only 145 (52:48 percent male:female) completed both surveys and were included in the analysis. Self-rated M/E scores were obtained using the 13-item Basic Language Morningness Scale (BALM) (Brown, 1993) and the 19-item Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (MEQ) (Horne & Östberg, 1976), based on habitual sleep time preferences, greatest activity times, and mental and physical feelings of best times of day. While all majors were composed of mostly I-Types, they varied in their proportions of M-Types, E-Types, and I-Types, and proportions also differed depending on the M/E scale (BALM vs. MEQ). To supplement the comparison, data were used from the previous study (For a review see Brown & LaJambe, 2004). The Chi Square statistical tests of overall differences in the proportions of chronotypes among 15 majors were non-significant for the BALM (χ(28) = 33.36, p = 0.223) and MEQ (χ(28) = 23.39, p = 0.393) scales. However, individual analyses within a few majors showed some striking chronotype differences, suggesting a possible chronotype factor influencing that major selection.