Purpose: This paper outlines a variety of the research on student attrition and recognisessome of the sensitivities that may be involved for some students in dealing with dropping outof university. The paper claims that because of these sensibilities, some student’s responsesto direct questions about the reasons for attrition may be biased by social desirability. An aimof this research was therefore to get beyond social desirability bias, to examine a fuller rangeof reasons for student retention and attrition.Design/Methodology: In an exploratory investigation, this research study utilises aprojective technique which helps to circumvent the conscious defences of respondents. Theprojective technique is based on the ‘thematic apperception test’ and uses a ‘bubble drawing’to elicit emotional and more socially undesirable responses.Findings: All first-year students appear to consider leaving university and emotionalconsiderations involving loneliness and homesickness are much more prominent than mostquantitative studies acknowledge. For example, in this research, social concerns are twice asprominent as financial concerns, whereas in past survey research financial concerns havebeen identified as most prominent.Practical Implications: To retain students, universities need to provide new students withreal care and support, especially in their first few weeks at university. To study retentioncomprehensively, researchers need to go beyond the confines of positivist research.Originality: This is the first study that uses a projective technique to investigate studentretention and attrition. By going beyond a merely positivist approach to research, a fuller,deeper and more complete understanding of the wide extent and profound nature of theemotional issues involved in student attrition and retention is gained.

中文翻译：

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孤独，想家和挣扎：本科生和打算退出大学的打算

目的：本文概述了有关学生流失的各种研究，并认识到某些学生应对大学退学可能涉及的某些敏感性。该论文声称，由于这些敏感性，一些学生对有关损耗原因的直接问题的回答可能会因社会的期望而产生偏差。因此，本研究的目的是超越社会期望偏差，研究学生保留和流失的更广泛原因。设计/方法：在一项探索性研究中，本研究利用投射技术帮助绕过受访者的有意识防御。投射技术基于``主题知觉测验''，并使用``气泡图''引发情感上和社会上更不受欢迎的反应。所有一年级学生似乎都考虑离开大学，涉及孤独和思乡病的情感考虑要比大多数定量研究所承认的要突出得多。例如，在这项研究中，社会关注是财务关注的两倍，而在过去的调查研究中，财务关注被认为是最重要的。实际意义：为了留住学生，大学需要向新学生提供真正的照顾和支持，尤其是在他们的学习中。在大学的前几个星期。要全面研究保留率，研究人员需要超越实证主义研究的范围。来源：这是第一项使用投射技术研究学生保留率和减员率的研究。通过超越仅仅实证主义的研究方法，可以使研究更全面，