The development of instruments to measure the attitudes and perceptions of students towards courses in the hotel and catering industry.

This project examines the attitudes of students towards two courses run in the Department of Hotel and Catering at Sheffeld City Polytechnic. The relevant courses are the HND in Hotel, Catering and Institutional management and the B.Sc. (Hons) in Catering Systems.The focus of the research was from entry in October until the end of the first industrial placement, a period of eighteen months. The major concern of the research was the development of scales to measure attitudes and expectancies. These scales were then examined to see if there was any relationship between students responses and exam performance. It was not the aim of the project to produce a definitive predictive measure but rather to identify areas which may be related to student failure and or withdrawal. Four main aspects of students attitudes were considered, they were relevance of and interest in a subject, attitudes towards staff and department and attitudes towards teaching methods. Students expectancies concerning the course were also examined. It was hypothesised that students who had inaccurate expectancies and poor attitudes would be more at risk than their counterparts.The project also briefly looked at the students first industrial placement, taking the work of Smithers (1976) as a basis from which student attitudes were measured but also examining skills and benefits needed and gained and the relationship between college and industry. It was hoped that this section would provide information of how well students were being prepared by the courses for industry, what students were gaining from their training and whether catering courses and industry were complimenting each other or providing the students with conflicting experiences.Although the instruments developed were to some degree successful they served to illustrate the difficulties in identifying major factors affecting performance. From interviews conducted it had been noted that some aspects of the course acted as a source of satisfaction/dissatisfaction which led to the suggestion that rather than concentrating on students personal qualities alone it may be more productive to manipulate these factors within the course structure itself. Finally the results of the research into industrial training were most encouraging indicating that the course and industry were seen to be equally relevant and complimentary by students and that the students felt they gained valuable skills from their training period.