The greening of the United States teacher workforce puts a premium on districts and schools hiring effective and persistent beginning teachers. Given the limitations of characteristics currently available at the time of hiring (e.g., academic ability measures, preparation type), we built off previous research in economics and psychology to…

We explore possibilities for placing community college students in math using non-cognitive measures, such as indicators of motivation or students' educational plans. First, we use supplemental administrative data gathered during routine placement testing in a large urban community college district in California to conduct predictive exercises…

This paper identifies specific problems with stepwise regression, notes criticisms of stepwise methods by statisticians, suggests appropriate ways in which stepwise procedures can be used, and gives examples of how this can be done. Although the stepwise method has been routinely criticized by statisticians, it is still frequently used in the…

Anxiety has been shown to have detrimental effects on students in the classroom. This study examined the relations between motivational variables and anxiety. In particular, this study utilized goal orientation theory to examine whether the personal goals a student adopts and the goal structures a student perceives in the classroom are predictors…

Values are a central concept in understanding and predicting human behavior. Value priority differences have been shown to predict important political, social, and economic attitudes and behaviors. The purpose of this study was to identify differences and similarities among the value hierarchies of adolescents who have never tried alcohol,…

This mini-research project examined middle school students' participation in and identification with school as a social unit. The study used a student survey to explore: (1) middle schoolers' perceptions of their family educational culture, instructional quality in their school, and their ability/academic self-efficacy; (2) their patterns of…

Numerous reviews and studies have documented high levels of substance use and abuse in the United States when compared to other developed nations. Previous research has identified several factors which place adolescents at risk for substance abuse. This study was designed to replicate and validate some of these risk factors with youth from rural…

The use of various physiological tests and measurements accurately predicts the performance ratings of female athletes. A study involving 180 female intercollegiate volleyball players, 142 female intercollegiate basketball players, and 115 female college-age nonathletes yielded a set of statistical differentials concerning arm length, lean weight…

In 1998, the British Government introduced the National Literacy Strategy (NLS) in all state primary schools (encompassing students aged 5-11) in England in a bid to raise literacy standards. A year earlier, 13 local education authorities were involved in the piloting of the project, including the city of Newcastle upon Tyne. The first Newcastle…

As part of the University of California's recent reconsideration of the role of the SAT in admissions, the UC Office of the President published an extensive report, "UC and the SAT" (2001), which examined the value of SAT I Reasoning Test scores, SAT II Subject Test scores, and high school grades in predicting the grade-point averages of…

The multiplicity of variables describing the financial conditions of postsecondary institutions makes it difficult to assess changes in higher education finance from year to year and to find the relationship between these finance variables and average faculty salaries. This study sought to determine if a small number of factors could be derived to…

The purpose of this study was to determine what, or part of what, makes academic success probable or improbable for a student. The core research question was, Which practices, characteristics, and circumstances of students, families, schools, school districts, and communities tend to give Maine students a higher probability of meeting state…

This study investigated disparities in reading performance among minority and white students in an urban school district undergoing desegregation in 1980-81. Phase one compared minority and white students on reading comprehension test performance. It was found that white students performed significantly higher on the test than minority students,…

A study sought to determine what relationships existed between speech rate, speech pitch variation, speech loudness, and the personality assessments made by listeners. The subjects, 214 undergraduate speech communication students, listened to one of eight tape recordings made by a male speaker to represent all the combinations of the three…

The Bean and Metzner Nontraditional Undergraduate Student Attrition Model appeared to be a good model to address community college student attrition because it takes into account the environmental variables that colleges must consider to enhance persistence. A study was conducted to determine how well the Bean and Metzner Model fit with community…