Education is one of the strongest predictors of health worldwide. In South Africa, school dropout is a crisis where by Grade 12, only 52% of the age appropriate population remain enrolled. Survival analysis was used to identify the risk of dropping out of secondary school for male and female adolescents and examine the influence of substance use…

Students routinely ignore negative feedback regarding their performances early in college science courses. In this study we analyzed the extent to which two standard forms of feedback, midterm and first-exam grades, correlated with final grades in several biology courses. The courses ranged from an introductory course for nonmajors to upper…

There are many situations where random assignment of participants to treatment and comparison conditions may be unethical or impractical. This article provides an overview of propensity score techniques that can be used for estimating treatment effects in nonrandomized quasi-experimental studies. After reviewing the logic of propensity score…

This study investigates whether adequate yearly progress (AYP) status, locale, and sector--common variables used to judge the quality of schools--accurately signal true differences in instructional practices in high school mathematics and science. Using data from the High School Longitudinal Study (HSLS), we find the school-to-school variation in…

Ten years of College Student Inventory (CSI) data from one Midwestern public land-grant university were used to study the role of motivational factors in predicting academic success and college student retention. Academic success was defined as cumulative grade point average (GPA), cumulative course load capacity (i.e., the number of credits…

In a national sample of the Italian population, surveyed four times between October 2002 and January 2007 (N = 2,008), we performed a multilevel longitudinal study aimed at predicting the increase in crime risk perception as a function of three families of independent variables, respectively lying at the within individual level (direct…

In this study, the National Educational Longitudinal Study (ELS:2002) dataset was used and a predictive data mining technique, decision tree analysis, was implemented in order to examine which factors, in conjunction to computer use, can be used to predict high or low probability of success in high school mathematics. Specifically, this study…

This article investigates three types of stage-sequential growth mixture models in the structural equation modeling framework for the analysis of multiple-phase longitudinal data. These models can be important tools for situations in which a single-phase growth mixture model produces distorted results and can allow researchers to better understand…

Tinto, Astin and countless others have researched the retention and attrition of students from college for more than thirty years. However, the six year graduation rate for all first-time full-time freshmen for the 2002 cohort was 57%. This study sought to determine the retention variables that predicted continued enrollment of entering freshmen…

Using a UK representative sample from the Millennium Cohort Study, the present study examined the unique and cumulative contribution of children's characteristics and attitudes to school, home learning environment and family's socio-economic background to children's language and literacy at the end of Key Stage 1 (age seven-years-old).…

Examined the consistency of student identification with subcultures in the Clark-Trow typology and determined that identification with a subculture during the undergraduate years is associated with choices 10 years later. (Author)

An investigation was undertaken of the intercorrelations among residuals obtained by applying regression techniques under two conditions: (1) mean sixth-grade Metropolitan Achievement Test reading scores predicted by mean second-grade Stanford Achievement Test reading scores, and (2) mean sixth-grade reading scores predicted by mean second-grade…

Discusses the relationship between changes in delinquency prevalence over time and prediction error. Data from a 21-year British longitudinal study exemplify the formal relationships that are derived. Results indicate statistically, as prevalence increases, a relative increase in false negative errors and a decrease in false positive errors…

This article examines the relationship between grading systems and performance on national board examinations. The study demonstrates that board scores verify traditional grading as an indicator of student performance despite many variables; students who do well with traditional grades should do as well with national boards. (LBH)

This paper reports a model of the impact of teacher behavior on student achievement. Estimates of the model's efficiency are obtained and its utility tested on a second set of data. Methodological and theoretical frameworks are from sociologists interested in contextual affects phenomena. Data were collected from 374 students during 1971-73. Using…