IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/applec/44y2012i9p1121-1132.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Students’ perceptions of economics: identifying demand for further study

Author

Listed:
  • Don J. Webber
  • Andrew Mearman

Abstract

Most university departments aspire to increase their quantity of students. The objective of this empirical study is to ascertain whether it is possible to identify students who would demand more economics study. Using data on student perceptions of economics and the application of logistic regression, two step autoclustering, K means clustering, analysis of variance and Tukey's honestly significant difference statistical techniques, we reveal distinct clusters of students, including a small cluster of students who appear to be more open to further study.

Suggested Citation

  • Don J. Webber & Andrew Mearman, 2012. "Students’ perceptions of economics: identifying demand for further study," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(9), pages 1121-1132, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:44:y:2012:i:9:p:1121-1132
    DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2010.537640
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2010.537640
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00036846.2010.537640?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John J. Siegfried, 2000. "Undergraduate Economics Degree Trends Through the 1990s," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(3), pages 296-300, September.
    2. David H. Reiley & Michael B. Urbancic & Mark Walker, 2008. "Stripped-Down Poker: A Classroom Game with Signaling and Bluffing," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(4), pages 323-341, September.
    3. Colander, David, 2003. "The Aging of an Economist," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(2), pages 157-176, June.
    4. Michelle S. Goeree & Jeroen Hinloopen, 2008. "Cooperation in the Classroom: Experimenting with R&D Cooperatives," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(4), pages 357-373, September.
    5. John J. Siegfried & Michael K. Salemi, 1999. "The State of Economic Education," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(2), pages 355-361, May.
    6. John J. Siegfried, 2008. "Trends in Undergraduate Economics Degrees, 1991-2007," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(3), pages 297-301, July.
    7. Charles A. Holt, 1999. "Teaching Economics with Classroom Experiments: A Symposium," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 65(3), pages 603-610, January.
    8. Denise Hazlett, 2008. "A Classroom Inflation Uncertainty Experiment," International Review of Economic Education, Economics Network, University of Bristol, vol. 7(1), pages 47-61.
    9. William E. Becker, 1997. "Teaching Economics to Undergraduates," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 35(3), pages 1347-1373, September.
    10. Jeff Borland & Joe Hirschberg & Jenny Lye, 2001. "Data reduction of discrete responses: an application of cluster analysis," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(3), pages 149-153.
    11. Nicola Reimann, 2004. "First-year Teaching-Learning Environments in Economics," International Review of Economic Education, Economics Network, University of Bristol, vol. 3(1), pages 9-38.
    12. Ray Bachan & Michael Barrow, 2006. "Modelling Curriculum Choice at A-level: Why is Business Studies More Popular than Economics?," International Review of Economic Education, Economics Network, University of Bristol, vol. 5(2), pages 58-80.
    13. Paul Ormerod, 2003. "Turning the Tide: Bringing Economics Teaching into the Twenty First Century," International Review of Economic Education, Economics Network, University of Bristol, vol. 1(1), pages 71-79.
    14. Colander, David & Klamer, Arjo, 1987. "The Making of an Economist," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 1(2), pages 95-111, Fall.
    15. Charles A. Holt, 1999. "Teaching Economics with Classroom Experiments: A Symposium," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 65(3), pages 603-610, January.
    16. Christine Huttin, 2000. "A cluster analysis on income elasticity variations and US pharmaceutical expenditures," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(10), pages 1241-1247.
    17. Stephen B. DeLoach & Steven A. Greenlaw, 2007. "Effectively Moderating Electronic Discussions," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(4), pages 419-434, September.
    18. Alauddin, Mohammad & Valadkhani, Abbas, 2003. "Causes and Implications of Declining Economics Major: A Focus on Australia," MPRA Paper 50393, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Andrew Mearman & Tim Wakeley & Gamila Shoib & Don J. Webber, 2011. "Does Pluralism in Economics Education Make Better Educated, Happier Students? A Qualitative Analysis," International Review of Economic Education, Economics Network, University of Bristol, vol. 10(2), pages 50-62.
    2. Andrew Mearman & Aspasia Papa & Don Webber, 2014. "Why do Students Study Economics?," Economic Issues Journal Articles, Economic Issues, vol. 19(1), pages 119-147, March.
      • Andrew Mearman & Aspasia Papa & Don J. Webber, 2013. "Why do students study economics?," Working Papers 20131303, Department of Accounting, Economics and Finance, Bristol Business School, University of the West of England, Bristol.
    3. Klarizze Anne Martin Puzon, 2023. "Democracy clusters and patterns of inequality: A k-means approach," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2023-72, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    4. Robert Hoffmann & Swee Hoon Chuah & Jason Potts, 2017. "Behavioral policy and its stakeholders," Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy, Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (SABE), vol. 1(S), pages 5-8, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Janet T. Knoedler & Daniel A. Underwood, 2004. "La enseñanza de los Principios de Economía: propuesta para un enfoque multiparadigmático," Revista de Economía Institucional, Universidad Externado de Colombia - Facultad de Economía, vol. 6(11), pages 39-72, July-Dece.
    2. Andrew Mearman & Aspasia Papa & Don Webber, 2014. "Why do Students Study Economics?," Economic Issues Journal Articles, Economic Issues, vol. 19(1), pages 119-147, March.
      • Andrew Mearman & Aspasia Papa & Don J. Webber, 2013. "Why do students study economics?," Working Papers 20131303, Department of Accounting, Economics and Finance, Bristol Business School, University of the West of England, Bristol.
    3. Andrew C. Worthington & Helen Higgs, 2000. "Student Perceptions of the Profession and the Decision to Major in Economics," School of Economics and Finance Discussion Papers and Working Papers Series 085, School of Economics and Finance, Queensland University of Technology.
    4. Dr. Mohammad Alauddin & Professor John Foster, 2005. "Teaching Economics at the University Level: Dynamics of Parameters and Implications," Discussion Papers Series 339, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    5. Santos, Joseph M., 2002. "Peer Pressure: Refereed Journals And Empirical Research In The Undergraduate Economics Curriculum," 2002 Annual meeting, July 28-31, Long Beach, CA 19854, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    6. Colander, David, 2009. "What Was “It” That Robbins Was Defining?," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 31(4), pages 437-448, December.
    7. Andrew Mearman & Tim Wakeley & Gamila Shoib & Don J. Webber, 2011. "Does Pluralism in Economics Education Make Better Educated, Happier Students? A Qualitative Analysis," International Review of Economic Education, Economics Network, University of Bristol, vol. 10(2), pages 50-62.
    8. Bordo, Michael & Istrefi, Klodiana, 2023. "Perceived FOMC: The making of hawks, doves and swingers," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 125-143.
    9. Andrew Worthington & Helen Higgs, 2003. "Factors explaining the choice of a finance major: the role of students' characteristics, personality and perceptions of the profession," Accounting Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(1), pages 1-21.
    10. Gerald Eisenkopf & Pascal A. Sulser, 2016. "Randomized controlled trial of teaching methods: Do classroom experiments improve economic education in high schools?," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(3), pages 211-225, July.
    11. Colander, David, 2003. "The Aging of an Economist," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(2), pages 157-176, June.
    12. David Colander & Jessica Holmes, 2007. "Gender and graduate economics education in the US," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(2), pages 93-116.
    13. Spahn Peter, 2009. "The New Keynesian Microfoundation of Macroeconomics," Review of Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 60(3), pages 181-203, December.
    14. Allgood, Sam, 2001. "Grade targets and teaching innovations," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 20(5), pages 485-493, October.
    15. Mohsen Javdani & Ha-Joon Chang, 2023. "Who said or what said? Estimating ideological bias in views among economists," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 47(2), pages 309-339.
    16. Klaus Mohn, 2010. "Autism in Economics? A Second Opinion," Forum for Social Economics, Springer;The Association for Social Economics, vol. 39(2), pages 191-208, July.
    17. Lourdes Espinoza & Carlos Gustavo Machicado & Katia Makhlouf, 2007. "La Enseñanza de Economía en Bolivia y Chile," Development Research Working Paper Series 10/2007, Institute for Advanced Development Studies.
    18. David Colander, 2009. "Can European Economics Compete with U.S. Economics? And Should It"," Middlebury College Working Paper Series 0902, Middlebury College, Department of Economics.
    19. Daniel B. Klein & Stewart Dompe, 2007. "Reasons for Supporting the Minimum Wage: Asking Signatories of the "Raise the Minimum Wage" Statement," Econ Journal Watch, Econ Journal Watch, vol. 4(1), pages 125-167, January.
    20. Martin Kniepert, 2014. "Die (Neue) Institutionenökonomik als Ansatz für einen erweiterten, offeneren Zugang zur Volkswirtschaftslehre," Working Papers 552014, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Department of Economics and Social Sciences, Institute for Sustainable Economic Development.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • A22 - General Economics and Teaching - - Economic Education and Teaching of Economics - - - Undergraduate
    • A29 - General Economics and Teaching - - Economic Education and Teaching of Economics - - - Other

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:applec:44:y:2012:i:9:p:1121-1132. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEC20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.