AbstractsPsychology

Project work of 4-H club members has been traditionally evaluated by a judge who awarded it a ribbon which denoted the project's quality. In Oregon several counties have tried a judge-member discussion period during which the judge and club member together evaluate the member's project in an attempt to improve the member's attitude toward the exhibit experience. The purpose of this study was to determine if participation in the judge-member discussion did affect the club member's attitude toward the exhibit experience. The relationship between the type of discussion the girl had with the judge and her attitude toward the exhibit experience was also investigated. 4-H clothing club members from two Oregon counties were the subjects of the study. Club members from Washington county formed the control group and received the usual ribbon and written comment evaluation from the judge. The experimental group from Marion county participated in the judge-member evaluation of their clothing projects. The girls attitudes toward the exhibit experience were measured by an attitude questionnaire sent to both groups following the exhibit. Attitude toward the exhibit was considered to consist of three areas: attitude toward the role and status of the judge; attitude toward the importance of the ribbon, and attitude regarding the learning value of the exhibit. These attitude areas formed three quasi-scales constructed by the Guttman method. The judge-member discussions were observed and evaluated using the Interaction Process Analysis developed by Bales. The judge and club member were rated as "high" or "low" in discussion on the basis of the proportion of interaction each initiated. Analysis of the data collected was done with the chi-square statistic using the test of independence. Analysis of data concerning the ten hypotheses proposed indicated the following results: 1. The member's experience in the judge-member discussion showed a slight positive relationship with "desired" attitudes toward the judge, but did not relate to more positive attitudes toward the ribbon and the value of learning experience of the exhibit. The type of discussion the girl experienced was not related to her attitude toward the exhibit. The girl's age, place of residence, color of ribbon received, number of discussions experienced or involvement of family in 4-H were not related to the girl's attitude toward the exhibit. The amount of evaluation and information given by the judge to a club member in a discussion was positively related to the color of ribbon the girl had received. Generally the results indicate that the judge-member discussion made little difference between the attitudes of discussion participants and non-participants as measured by the instruments used in this study.