Support structures: perspectives of single mother graduates who received public assistance while pursuing their degree.

• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20328887

This interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) sought to understand the experiences that promoted the persistence to graduation efforts of six bachelor-degree recipients who were single mothers and received public assistance while pursuing their degrees. The question that guided this study was: How do single mother bachelor degree recipients from an urban comprehensive college who received public assistance while in school make sense of the experiences that facilitated their self-efficacy to persist to graduation? The research question was informed by Bandura's self-efficacy theory, which postulates that people's beliefs about their capability to perform is influenced by four sources of information: enactive mastery experiences, vicarious learning, verbal persuasion, and physiological states. The data for this IPA study was collected through semi-structured, one-to-one interviews with a commitment to an in-depth idiographic approach that focused on how each participant made sense of her experiences. Three themes emerged from the data analysis: (a) accepting their reality, (b) overcoming barriers to graduation, and (c) encouragement and support. As per the findings, accepting their reality explained the resilient sense of self-efficacy participants developed as a function of mastering experiences with adapting and changing in the face of adversity; overcoming barriers to graduation lent support to the development of perceived self-efficacy based on previous successes or failures and its influence on the participants' perceptual lenses in relation to their capability to achieve academic success; and encouragement and support underscored the value faculty supports embodied on participants' self-efficacy beliefs to persist to degree completion. These findings have relevance for higher education institutions, state and federal policymakers, and student constituencies. Keywords: single mothers, higher education, support programs, self-sufficiency, welfare reform, college persistence, degree attainment, and social integration.--Author's abstract