Social justice advocacy is a necessary role for counselors. It is a part of their identity and ethical obligations to engage in advocacy with and on behalf of any individuals and communities experiencing injustice related to systemic disenfranchisement stemming from marginalized status due to race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and social…

Persistence in distance learning has become problematic. This quantitative nonexperimental study examined whether perceived connectivity, perceived internal locus of control, and age predict persistence in online master's degree programs. Rotter's locus of control theory, Moore's transactional distance theory, and Rovai's composite persistence…

This study addressed whether gender, social desirability, statistics levels, and statistics self-efficacy can significantly predict variation in statistics anxiety at the graduate level. Statistics anxiety undermines performance throughout academia and reduces employment opportunities that require skills in statistics. Previous studies have…

Physics education research to date has predominantly focused on the undergraduate level. This has left critical avenues of research in graduate education relatively understudied and has motivated much of my research. Numerous studies across the education research landscape have analyzed undergraduate admissions practices, but few have critically…

This study explored graduate student self-determination as a writer, need for cognition, and sense of belonging as predictors of their confidence today in their program completion. The data set consisted of 2,390 graduate students at universities across the United States. The data analysis was conducted using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM),…

The purpose of this dissertation study was twofold. First, this research study examined the role of noncognitive factors on degree completion, academic achievement, and persistence. Second, this research study examined the utility of the Personal Potential Index (PPI) as an avenue to reliably assess noncognitive factors of graduate students that…

Professional advocacy is central to the counselor's professional identity and is essential for counselors to maintain the privilege of serving clients. Despite CACREP requirements for programs to provide training in professional advocacy, counseling students may need more training in this area. This quantitative study examined professional…

Every year roughly 50% of graduate students drop out of doctoral programs (Farkas, 2018). Per Farkas (2018), the top seven reasons for this include time management difficulties, conflicts with a supervisor, the student's thesis not having a "story," exhaustion or burnout, problems writing up theses (one of the main problems described is…

Purpose: The purpose of this scholarly project was to determine if GRE scores (verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, and analytical writing) predict first-time pass rate on the NCE. This project also investigated the correlation between first-time pass rate on the NCE and the individual covariates of age at program matriculation, sex, race,…

This quantitative correlational study explored the factors influencing graduate level student dropout intention across disciplines. Based on previous retention research that focused on undergraduate populations, this study attempted to investigate how that research could be applied to a graduate level student population in a private, non-profit,…

This research study analyzes how the predictor variables sensing-intuitive learning style, verbal-visual learning style, gender, major, and degree level of adult learners predict student intrinsic motivation-to know, extrinsic motivation-external regulation, and amotivation to pursue an online graduate degree. The primary research question states:…

In the 21st century, more students enroll in higher education and take federal loans to defer the cost of attendance resulting in average levels of borrowing steadily increasing. In the same timeframe, there is an increase in the number of students entering repayment for their federal loans and an increase in the proportion of individuals…

Dangerous alcohol use, or binge drinking and alcohol use that results in significant negative consequences, is a major health concern in university populations. Research on graduate students' and Veteran students' alcohol use is limited. Using protective behavioral strategies (PBS) before or during alcohol use can attenuate the negative…

Student persistence, which is student's progress towards graduation through achieving or meeting educational goals, is widely studied. The focus of a majority of the studies on student persistence is on students at the K-12 and undergraduate levels. Furthermore, while persistence of graduate student population was studied, such studies focused on…

As online learning continues to grow, particularly amid the COVID pandemic, so too has interest among educational practitioners and researchers to understand the personal and contextual factors that shape students' emotions in these environments. The control-value theory of achievement emotions has emerged as a useful framework for examining the…