FACTORS RELATED TO EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION OF STUDENTS IN THE FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT SCIENCES AT KASETSART UNIVERSITY

Abstract

The objectives of the research were to 1) examine the level of factors and the effective communication among students, 2) to explore the relationship between these factors and students’ effective communication, and 3) to identify specific factors affecting effective communication among students enrolling in the Faculty of Education and Development Sciences at Kasetsart University. The sample consisted of 296 undergraduate students from the Faculty of Education and Development Sciences at Kasetsart University. The research tools included a set of questionnaires, with the discriminative power  ranging from 0.30 to 0.95, with a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient between 0.943 and 0.977, and a knowledge test, with the discriminative power ranging from 0.20 to 0.40, and a KR20 coefficient of 0.415. The statistics for data analysis were frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, Pearson’s product-moment correlation coefficient, and stepwise multiple regression analysis.

The research results found that: 1) Students demonstrated a high level of effective communication, good attitudes toward effective communication, and a high level of creative thinking, listening skills, speaking skills, and social support from peers. They reported a relatively high level of good mental health and knowledge of using the Thai language for communication at a relatively low level, 2) The relationship between factors and the students' effective communication revealed that all independent variables exhibited a statistically significant correlation with the dependent variable, and 3) The factors affecting students’ effective communication encompassed five variables, namely creative thinking, knowledge of using the Thai language for communication, social support from peers, speaking skills, and good attitudes toward effective communication, could jointly predict students’ effective communication with 57.6 percent at the 0.05 level of significance.