Attrition in engineering programs continues to be an important issue for universities across the country. This study examined the connection between student performance in barrier courses and persistence in engineering. Quantitative results showed that high school academic experience, student behaviors (including study habits, work habits, coping…

This study of faculty stress used data from the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) survey administrated in the 1992-93 academic year. The total data set includes survey information from more than 43,000 faculty at nearly 300 higher education institutions in the United States. For this study, data for 29,064 full-time teaching faculty were…

The study examined the role student, teacher/classroom, and school characteristics play on the "digital divide" in access and utilization of various technology tools among elementary school students. Survey data was collected from 1,027 fourth- and fifth-grade students in 48 classrooms in northeastern Ohio. A two-level hierarchical…

To determine if women or men have lower aspiration levels for school administrative positions, male and female administrative certificate holders were asked for their ultimate career goal. The most frequent response was superintendent (36 percent), followed by elementary principal, out of education, and professor (12 percent for each choice). The…

The relationships between teachers' attitudes toward responsibility and locus of control and other characteristics such as stress, educational attitudes, and attitudes toward change were studied in 54 (35 female and 19 male) experienced primary and secondary school teachers taking a course on classroom-based research. Attitude toward…

A study was conducted to analyze the sociodemographic determinants of participation, satisfaction, and persistence in American adult education in order to formulate recommendations for public policy regarding access to lifelong learning opportunities. Data were collected from questionnaire responses by a sample of 79,631 adults. Of the total…

A recent decline in the ability to predict first-year grade point average using the traditional regression analyses incorporating Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SAT) and high school rank as predictors fostered an investigation of the effectiveness of alternative procedures to predict academic success. Four procedures were investigated and compared,…

Published reports and papers pertaining to the validity of measures commonly used at college entrance are reviewed and summarized in this report. These measures consist of various types of academic quantitative indices used to describe the high school record and various types of academic tests. The data are categorized by sex and ethnic…

Data from a national survey of microcomputer uses in schools are used to demonstrate differences in access to and uses of computers by students. Factors examined include race, socioeconomic status, sex, achievement, and ability level. Also discussed are inequality and inequity and the need for additional research on computer impact. (RP)

This study compared levels of achievement of three groups of Houston (Texas) police academy cadets: those with no military service but with 60 or more college credit hours, those with military service and 0 hours of college credit, and those with military service and 1 to 59 hours of college credit. Prior to 1991, police cadets in Houston were…

Two studies illustrate how omitting faculty rank as a predictor variable from gender equity studies of faculty salaries can lead to incorrect conclusions about gender discrimination. One uses hypothetical data constructed so there is no gender difference in salary, but omission of academic rank skews the results. The second uses data from a…

This study investigates pre-enrollment factors, particularly those related to computer confidence, in relation to persistence in the community college. Data on sex, ethnicity, reading level, high school grade point average (GPA), goal for attending college, and self-reported ability to use five computer application programs were gathered from 543…

This paper briefly reviews the literature on the common factors in effective college student retention programs, then presents a study assessing the impact of the institution's mission effectiveness as distinct from other determinants of student retention. The assessment of retention predictors and the effects of the school's mission were…

A 2-year study of 206 college students at an urban research university in a southern state examined personal, environmental, academic, and non-academic predictors of: (1) course grade performance; and (2) academic retention. Of particular interest were "high-risk" or "disadvantaged" students and how they compensated for their…

The relationships of quantitative measures of writing skills to overall writing quality as measured by the E.T.S. Composition Evaluation Scale (CES) were examined. Quantitative measures included indices of language productivity, vocabulary diversity, spelling, and syntactic maturity. Power of specific indices to account for variation in overall…