College students may be influenced by a variety of factors when choosing a major. Mathematics anxiety has received substantial attention, but has not been considered as a factor in choice of college major. The relationship between mathematics anxiety and the academic majors chosen by new freshmen prior to enrollment was investigated for a group of…

Students entering the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as freshmen in 1967-72 were followed for approximately six years after their initial enrollment to determine the number who received their bachelor's degrees from the institution. For all six freshmen classes combined, 49.9 percent received their degrees within four years, 64.8…

Issues associated with the ACT (American College Testing) Assessment Program illustrate the need to assess college entrance examinations in terms of the variety of common predictive uses such as estimation of first year grade point average (GPA), or chances of obtaining a C average after certain semesters or in specific courses. Test developers…

The performance of all 200,000 examinees on the Professional and Administrative Career Examination (PACE) in fiscal year 1975, its first year of administration, is presented in l0 graphs and l00 tables. The data describe the ratings obtained by six groups of competitors: by series of written test, by Veteran Preference status, by Outstanding…

Three categories of dependent variables used in classroom research were defined: (1) academic--behavior related to a specific academic area, achievement, or test performance; (2) deportmental--behavior related to classroom conduct, such as paying attention to teacher, whispering, and following instructions; and (3) other--including thumbsucking,…

Progress that has been made in second language research in the last two years and future directions in the research methodology of second language studies are discussed. In order to examine the continuation and expansion of current research, the research reported by Schumann (1976) is compared with current research as represented by the titles of…

Presented is an abstract of a study done to try to determine a set of variables which are capable of accounting for a significant amount of variation in algebra achievement in each of two instructional formats. Tables representing final grade distributions, initial comparison of groups, and comparability of volunteer subgroup variables are…

Four groups of students were compared on cumulative grade point average, total credit hours attempted, and differences between predicted and actual grade point average (GPA). The four groups of students were formed by the semester in which they declared a major: students declaring in the third semester made up one group, those declaring in the…

Most governmental or organizational efforts to influence the retirement decision have used financial incentives. The extent to which job attitudes are predictive of early retirement decisions beyond the predictions by income, health and demographic characteristics is an important consideration. Michigan Civil Service employees (N=379) who were…

A study was conducted to determine what conditions connected with college students' entering status were associated with significantly increased error reduction during the first semester of freshman composition and what factors connected with preparation made it possible to classify students who proved to be successful--or unsuccessful--in that…

Comparative applications of simple and complex faculty flow models are examined to determine (1) their relative demands for data and calculations, (2) the divergence of their projections, especially when modelling a no-growth faculty, and (3) an estimate of the error incurred (i.e., the cost to analysis) when a simple model is used. The results…

A labor force mobility model was developed to forecast the impact of several alternate statistical definitions of "fairness" in selection on minority employment. With data from an existing organization as a starting point, those forecasts showed that the definition of fairness in Federal regulations (Cleary's regression model) would have a worse…

An exploratory study was conducted to define broadly some indices of student writing development. Student essays prepared by high school seniors and third-year university students outside the classroom were collected for analysis. The essays were drawn from four disciplines--English literature, history, geography, and biology--and represented the…

Literature concerning factors associated with academic performance and withdrawal from college is reviewed separately for North American, United Kingdom, and Australian universities to help illuminate the problem of student withdrawal in Australia. V. Tinto's 1975 research review concerning North American college dropouts is summarized, and…

Although a number of studies have been conducted to examine the status attainment process, very few have focused on differences in educational attainment for black, white, and Hispanic females. The primary purpose of this study was to test predictive models of attainment for these subgroups. Variables considered potentially important to the…