Die voorspelling van akademiese prestasie van technikon-afstandsonderrigstudente met diverse onderwysagtergronde

English: Since the abolition of separate tertiary institutions for different population groups, candidates with diverse academic backgrounds apply for admission at the same tertiary institutions. The increase in student numbers compels tertiary institutions to select applicants. Many South African researchers argue that separate departments of education for the different population groups led to a situation where applicants from the former black secondary schools who received an ineffective school education are being discriminated against by selection procedures based on matriculation results as a predictor of tertiary academic success. Other researchers argue that differences in educational backgrounds are not necessarily detrimental to applicants from disadvantaged educational backgrounds. Cleary's (1968) regression model can incorporate differences in predictor means, criterion means and prediction-criterion correlations for different subgroups. Prediction bias occurs when the criterion performance for a certain demographic group is constantly over- or underpredicted and becomes evident when the regression lines of the subgroups differ. Prediction bias can be removed by computing separate regression lines for different subgroups. Different cut-off points for the different demographic groups involved are then to be determined. The candidates are selected according to their predicted criterion performance. Unbiased predictions are made because candidates with the same predicted criterion performance are either rejected or accepted, irrespective of their demographic group membership. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the validity of matriculation marks as a predictor of the academic performance of first-year technicon distance education students. Secondly, the objective was to determine whether the predictive validity of matriculation results differ for students from advantaged and disadvantaged school backgrounds and finally to investigate the differential prediction of these groups' performance on the basis of matriculation results. The matriculation and first-year results of technicon distance education candidates who enrolled in 1998 at Technicon South Africa in the Free State were used. Matriculation results, high school background and the programme for which the student had registered, were used as predictor variables in the regression equation. The study revealed that the program, for which the student registered, explained 16,7% of the criterion variance. Matriculation results explained 12,5% and secondary school background explained 3,9% of the criterion variance. These results suggest that the programme the first-year student registered for has the greatest effect on his or her tertiary academic performance. Different standards and levels of difficulty between different programmes are most likely the explanation for this finding. The lower than expected percentage of criterion variance explained by matriculation results may possibly be attributed to the longer time interval that exists between school and tertiary education in distance education as opposed to residential education. The lower than expected criterion variance explained by school background can be due to the use of home language as an indicator of high school background. It is possible that some African language speakers indicated English as their home language and could have been categorized incorrectly in the advantaged group. Also, some African language-speaking students could have matriculated from traditionally white matriculation authorities and could have been categorized incorrectly as coming from a non-disadvantaged school background. The correlations between the above-mentioned variables for African (0,0447) and Afrikaans and English speaking candidates (0,1408) were significant on the 1% level. Matriculation performance was thus differentially valid for both groups. The regression equation has different Y-intercepts, but does not significantly differ in slope. No significant interaction between matriculation and group membership was thus found for the groups.