As the presence of online and hybrid coursework at institutions of higher education has increased, so too has interest among educators and scholars in understanding personal and contextual factors that predict success in different types of learning environments. The purpose of the present study was to examine the relations among temporally-ordered…

Individual differences in academic success were investigated in a geographically defined whole-population sample of very preterm children with a gestational age of less than 32 weeks or a birth weight of less than 1500 gm. The sample consisted of 264 very preterm children (75.6% of German-speaking survivors) and 264 controls matched for gender,…

A longitudinal study of political attitudes and behavior of high school students reveals varying results when two different methods of data analysis are applied. A sample of 293 students was questioned (during their sophomore year in 1974 and again in 1976 when they were seniors) about political orientation, number of social studies classes taken,…

Examined over 200 perinatal variables relating to mothers and to children's neurological, cognitive, and motor functions at 15 months and 4 and 7 years. Factor analysis identified latent variables that characterized covariations among perinatal variables. There were many correlations to children's outcomes, particularly for variables relating to…

In this paper, personality characteristics of the students and their performance at school are linked together. The performance cycle model of 12 months duration used here contains causal relationships between initial achievement, the mediating variables of academic motivation and attentiveness, and final achievement. A random sample of 215…

The logic of using a gain score approach versus longitudinal causal models is studied in this secondary analysis of a complex data base. The gain score model used by the Federal Reserve Bank and the School District of Philadelphia in their "What Works in Reading?" study is successively refined using the LISREL structural equation…

Focusing on the family as a context for the development of life plans by youth, this report summarizes findings of a 14-year longitudinal study on the educational and occupational life plans and achievement of youth in rural low-income areas in six southeastern states. Specific attention is given to (1) how parental educational and occupational…

Since the mean score for a sample composed of several subgroups can be viewed as the sum of the mean of each subgroup weighted by the proportional size of the subgroup, then the mean change in a time period--in this case, from 1972 to 1980--is the sum of the differences between the means for each subgroup, with each mean weighted by its…