Toward a Model of Vocational Persistence among Seminarians: Part 1

Those working in seminary training have long suspected that the personal characteristics of dropouts differ from those who remain in or complete the training program. Knoweles (1958) stated that the literature reveals a growing concern for qualitative analysis of the characteristics of religious students; and among the important areas of needed research suggested by McCarthy (1960) are studies dealing with tne differences between those who remain in and those who leave seminary training. Past research (Kennedy, 1958; Sweeney, 1964; Vaughan, 1963; etc.) has found individual variables which significantly differentiate between staying in and leaving seminary training. The statistics have not been accurate enough for individual prediction and the results of other studies using the same variables on different populations have been inconclusive enough to produce the general conclusion that the majority of those who leave the seminary do so, not because of unsuitability, but because of insufficient motivation (D'Arcy and Kennedy, 1965). To the author's knowledge there have been few investigations aimed at determining the motivations of seminary persisters and leavers. The primary interest in the study of motivation " ...is to identify and understand the effects of all the important contemporaneous influences which determine the direction of action, its vigor, and its persistence" (Atkinson, 1966, p. 2). Lewin (Atkinson, 1966)