Despite being criticized as unrepresentative and misleading, retention and graduation rates are an important part of college-search web sites and accountability systems, and they frequently have been used as indicators of institutional quality and effectiveness in educational research. Retention and graduation rates are often compared over time…

This methodological note illustrates how a commonly used calculation of the Delta-p statistic is inappropriate for categorical independent variables, and this note provides users of logistic regression with a revised calculation of the Delta-p statistic that is more meaningful when studying the differences in the predicted probability of an…

Data from a national survey with 3,963 respondents indicate that genuine research assistantship experience is positively related to subsequent research involvement and productivity. Variables identifying productive and nonproductive respondents are reported, and recommendations are offered for training educational researchers. (Author/LBH)

A study of medical student performance showed the clinical performance factor more or less unpredictable from aptitude and premedical academic achievement indices while the academic performance factor was forecast with acceptable accuracy by equations based on the Medical College Admissions Test and premedical grade point average. (JT)

An investigation of how well the predictor variables of credit hours, student credit hours, contact hours, student contact hours, level of instruction, and academic rank correlate with faculty self-report measures of time-use for each class taught showed that only contact hours were a reliable measure of faculty effort as measured in time for a…

A study of the relationship between class size and college student achievement in classes ranging from 13 to 1,006 students revealed that at this level, class size may be a less important factor in achievement than has been assumed. (MSE)