Reviews of Education and Innovation in a Guatemalan Community
"Sexton's approach is almost exclusively a quantitative analysis of information obtained through questionnaires. His investigation, carried out in the summer of 1970, involved interviews with a sample of seventy-three Indian heads-of-household in the Tzutuhil village of San Juan. Essentially, his model of analysis treats a five-item scale of innovation as the dependent variable, and schooling, "eternal exposure," economic status, attitude, contact with Ladinos, and religious affiliation as the hypothesized independent variables. Using multiple regressions and path analysis, he finds that external exposure and schooling are the best predictors of innovation. Path analysis suggests that age is a causal factor to schooling and external exposure--younger men tend to be those with more schooling, those with more exposure to news media and to the national army, and, finally, those who innovate.
"Sexton is commendably thorough in detailing his assumptions and his methodology."
--Stephen G. Sellers, American Anthropologist, Vol. 76: 919-20, 1974.
"This study focuses on the impact of formal education and informal education in respect to innovation in San Juan, a Maya Indian village."
--Latin American Research Review, 1973.