The effects of financial aid on persistence to Bachelor's degree were studied using data from the national longitudinal Beginning Postsecondary Student Survey for 1989-90 freshmen. The subsample of 3,188 students were enrolled full-time in four-year institutions; persistence was defined as attainment of the Bachelor's degree from the institution…

This study explored the relationship between perceived educational opportunities and the likelihood of first birth among young women. Data came from the first five waves (1979-1983) of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. A cohort of 1,747 females, 14 to 16 years of age at the first interview, who had not experienced a birth prior to the…

In May 1993, the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges adopted goals and attainment measures for improving the participation of people of color in system colleges, focusing on enrollment, retention, completion, and employment rates of ethnic groups compared to their proportions in the state's population. An analysis conducted…

Prince George's Community College, in Maryland, has developed a typology of student academic outcomes which takes into account the possibilities inherent in an open enrollment student body. The outcomes in the typology are award and transfer; transfer/no award; award/no transfer; traditional achievers, a summary of these three outcomes; sophomore…

This final report reviews the second phase of a life-span study of boys with fragile X syndrome (FSX), the most common known inherited cause of mental retardation. Males with the syndrome are more severely affected than females and in males, delays are usually evident in all the developmental domains, although cognitive and communication skills…

This study examines how instruction in the first language (L1), Chinese, and in the second language (L2), English, affects a large sample of students' academic achievement in L1, L2, and content, nonlanguage school subjects, including mathematics, science, geography, and history, in their first 3 years of high school. For all four content area…

This study addressed the question of how much graduation rates would improve if new students were followed for 10 instead of four or six years from their date of first enrollment; it also compared enrollment and graduation patterns of new freshmen and new transfers to see if graduation rates were similar after 10 years. Participants were all…

This study examined the reciprocal influence between parenting style and parental involvement in schooling practices and adolescent autonomy over a 2-year period. Participating in the study were 872 adolescents with a mean age of 14.5 years at Time 1 and attending 5 French-speaking public high schools in Quebec, Canada. From the initial cohort,…

This report describes the methods and procedures used for the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study: 1996-2001 (BPS:1996/2001). These students, who started their postsecondary education during the 1995-96 academic year, were first interviewed in 1996 as part of the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:96). A follow-up…

A sample of married Pennsylvania women with rural backgrounds and a national probability sample of women with urban backgrounds are compared in order to examine the effects of rural residence on the socioeconomic attainment process. Findings indicate rural backgrounds are associated with deficits in human capital resources and socioeconomic…

The critical need for more extensive data, both short and long range, on the career outcomes of college graduates and the factors that affect those outcomes is discussed. Such data could be used by educators, employers, and students in improving the relationship between education and work. (Author/MLW)

A 24-month study of 96 patients in a community-based oral health promotion project found the Geriatric Oral Health Assessment Index (GOHAI), a self-report measure of oral health, to be sensitive to provision of dental care. Some further development of measures is needed. Potential applications of this and similar self-report measures in dental…

National longitudinal retention data on 52,898 students at 65 colleges and universities were used to generate formulas for estimating any institution's expected retention rate based on its students' high school grades, admission test scores, and racial and gender composition. Separate formulas were computed for estimating degree completion rates…

Examined psychometric properties of Parenting Stress Index. Subjects were 191 low-income, urban African American mothers. Found acceptable subscale internal consistency and stability over six months. Concurrent validity revealed high convergence across measures among mothers reporting consistent stress. Subjects reported elevated stress levels in…

Examined whether there is an earlier developmental stage than 2 years of age when bilingual children do not use their languages in pragmatically differentiated ways. Analyses of recordings of four French-English bilingual children in Canada during free play sessions with their mothers and fathers suggest a stage very early in development when…