Focusing on student retention and time to degree completion, this study illustrates how institutional researchers may benefit from the power of predictive analyses associated with data-mining tools. The following are appended: (1) Predictors; and (2) Variable Definitions. (Contains 5 figures.)

THE EFFECTS OF DIFFERING TEACHER CHARACTERISTICS AND OF VARIOUS STUDENT CHARACTERISTICS UPON LEARNING IN COLLEGE WERE MEASURED BY AN INSTRUMENT CALLED THE "CRITERIA TEST," WHICH CONTAINED SUBTESTS FOR MEASURING SEVERAL LEVELS OF COGNITIVE COURSE OUTCOMES AS FUNCTIONS OF INTERACTIONS AMONG METHODS OF TEACHING, TEACHER PERSONALITY, AND…

The significance of family background (FB) and school factors (SO) in predicting differences among students in their achievement and motivation in different regions of the country (North-South) and areas of residence (metropolitan-nonmetropolitan) is investigated. A statistical test of the equality of slopes and intercepts was used for the FB and…

The report "UNO Act Class Profile, 1989-90" in the first of two serial issues presents salient parts of data from "The Class Profile Report" of the American College Testing (ACT) Corporation, which provides detailed information concerning the academic past of 1,359 freshmen entering the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) in…

Four systems for scoring student essays were used to classify eleventh grade and undergraduate students according to writing ability. The reliabilities of the raters and the validities of the systems in classifying students were emphasized. Two analytic scoring systems--which assume that quality writing is characterized by the inclusion of certain…

First-year graduate students were asked to respond to a biographical questionnaire which emphasized motivational variables in addition to the usual demographic variables. It was hypothesized that the students could select from a group of ability measures the one best indicator of how well they would do in graduate school. To test this hypothesis…

This document describes a model for predicting the success of recent high school graduates in Florida community college business courses. In the development of the model, test scores from the Florida Twelfth Grade Test and grades earned during the senior year by high school graduates from eleven high schools in Brevard County entering their first…

This edition, 22nd of a series begun in 1964, provides revisions of projections shown in "Projections of Education Statistics to 2002," and includes statistics on elementary schools, secondary schools, and institutions of higher education at the national level. Included are projections for enrollment, graduates, classroom teachers, and…

High risk students in college chemistry are often identified by low mathematics SAT scores, low American Chemical Society Toledo scores, and secondary school chemistry grades. This study was designed to identify additional variables that can be used at the community college level as predictors of success in chemistry. The study compared students'…

Academic and nonacademic variables that may predict persistence in the nursing program at Lakeland Community College, Ohio, were studied. The academic variables included American College Testing program standard scores, National League for Nursing (NLN) rank scores, high school grade point average, and previous college grade point average. The…

The records of 53 students in an introductory biology class at Fulton-Montgomery Community College were examined to determine the effect of selected variables on success in the course. The independent variables tested were age, sex, vocabulary and comprehensive grade placement levels (GPL) on the Nelson-Denny Reading Test, and whether or not the…

An item classification scheme developed by A. M. Gallagher (1990) was refined, resulting in a more accurate prediction of sex differences in the mathematical sections of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). Differential Item Functioning (DIF) procedures for examinees scoring over 650 indicated that the majority of items favoring males required the…

Describes an activity that introduces students to the use of database software to collect and interpret data. Asks middle school students to collect personal information regarding their dominant hand, eye, and thumb. Students use FIND and AND commands to create tables and respond to questions related to the data. (MDH)

A study was conducted at Macomb County Community College to determine whether there was a significant relationship between grades earned in individual nursing courses and the scores earned on corresponding subsets of the state board exam for nursing graduates and also whether a nursing student's success could be predicted from admissions…

To improve the accuracy of college placement, Rasch scoring and person-fit statistics on the Comparative Guidance and Placement test (CGP) was compared to the traditional right-only scoring. Correlations were calculated between English and mathematics course grades and scores of 1,448 entering freshmen on the reading, writing, and mathematics…