Dissertation Abstract

Deterrents to Participation in Web-Based Continuing Professional Education for Radiologic Technologists in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Despite the fact that Web-based continuing education is a logical solution to a problem that many radiologic technologists face in completing biannual continuing education requirements, no research has been done to understand the relative importance of deterrents to participation in Web-based continuing education for this group of professionals. This study sought to identify the underlying factors that deter radiologic technologists residing in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania from participating in Web-based continuing professional education.

The Deterrents to Participation Scale developed by Perdue (1999) was administered to a stratified random sample of radiologic technologists residing in Pennsylvania to determine the relative importance of the 57 deterrent items, to reduce those items so as to form an underlying structure (deterrent factors), and to determine the extent to which the respondents' personal and professional variables were related to the derived deterrent factors. The relative importance of the individual deterrent items was ascertained by ranking the 57 deterrent items by mean. Of the ten top-ranked deterrent items, three involved educational methodology preferences, two security concerns, two quality concerns, and one each of concerns regarding time constraint, evaluation, and access to political resources.

Moving to the broad forces that deter radiologic technologists from participating in Web-based continuing education, a principal components factor analysis yielded four orthogonal factors labeled Concerns about Electronically-Mediated Communication, Concerns about Necessary Personal Resources, Concerns about Quality of Course Offerings, and Concerns about Requirements of Electronically-Mediated Courses. These factors hold promise for theory-building in the area of deterrents to participation and for the development of strategies to increase the number of radiologic technologists who engage in Web-based continuing education. Nineteen statistically significant relationships were also uncovered between the deterrent factors and personal and professional variables. These relationships afforded a better understanding of how different groups of radiologic technologists may be affected differently by the broad deterrent factors. Finally, similarities were uncovered between the factor structure of the current study and that of the Perdue study of certified public accountants in Georgia.

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