Information Salience and Gender as Weighting Factors in the Impressions that Faculty Academic Advisors Form of College Students

The purpose of the researcher was to investigate the effect of gender of college student, academic information, and social information on the impressions that faculty academic advisors form of students. The sample consisted of 31 male and 20 female faculty members. The instrument employed was a 15 item questionnaire adapted by the researcher. Three independent variables were employed: a) gender of student, b) academic information, and c) social information. The dependent variables employed were impressions of intelligence, social skills, likeability, respectability, and future academic success. A two-way nested design was employed with academic and social information nested under gender. One null hypothesis was tested under 15 arrangements employing a one-way nested analysis of variance. A total of 30 comparisons were made and 15 were statistically significant at the .05 level. The null hypothesis for the nested effect was rejected. The results indicated that college students possessing positive academic information were rated higher on impressions pertaining to academics or intelligence, while students possessing positive social information were rated higher on impressions pertaining to personality or social traits. The present study supported the following generalizations: (1) Gender was not associated with ratings from faculty advisors. (2) Faculty advisors rated those students possessing positive academic information higher on items pertaining to academic or intellectual variables. (3) Faculty advisors rated those students possessing negative academic, information lower on items pertaining to academic or intellectual variables. (4) Faculty advisors rated those students possessing positive social information higher on items pertaining to social or personality variables. (5) Faculty advisors rated those students possessing negative social information lower on items pertaining to social or personality variables.