This study investigated the characteristics of an innovative cooperative high school-college program as perceived by principals of adopting and nonadopting schools. The data from survey questionnaires with 24 Likert-type items were reduced to six factors: observability, status, simplicity, cost, trialability, and relative advantage-cum-compatibility. A discriminant function was used to compare the situational variables of size, per pupil expenditure, and percent of college-bound students. The discrimination between adopters and nonadopters was not significant. The factors of trialability, status, and cost did discriminate significantly between the two groups. A cross-validation correctly classified 69 percent of the group. The adopting group did not, however, appear homogeneous. The factors of status, cost, and trialability entered in discriminating significantly between recent (1977) and earlier adopters. The implications are that (1) educators did perceive definable characteristics of this innovation, (2) adopters and nonadopters perceived this innovation differently, and (3) the dissemination of this innovation may be enhanced by maximizing these characteristics in development and communication. (Author)