Reluctance of respondents to participate in surveys has long drawn the attention of survey researchers. Yet, little is known about what drives a respondent's decision to answer the survey invitation early or late during the field period. Moreover, we still lack evidence on response timing in longitudinal surveys. That is, the questions on whether…

This study shows that residual variation can cause problems related to scaling in exponential random graph models (ERGM). Residual variation is likely to exist when there are unmeasured variables in a model--even those uncorrelated with other predictors--or when the logistic form of the model is inappropriate. As a consequence, coefficients cannot…

This paper investigates why people return to study in their 30s and beyond and upgrade to a higher level qualifications. Some previous research has argued that attitudes formed in childhood, via family background and schooling, continue to shape a person's engagement in learning throughout the adult lifecourse. Psychologists distinguish extrinsic…

Colleges offer remedial coursework to help students enrolling in post-secondary education who are not adequately prepared to succeed in college-level courses. Despite the prevalence of remediation, previous research presents contradictory findings regarding its short- and long-term effects. This paper uses a doubly robust inverse probability…

Since the seminal introduction of the propensity score (PS) by Rosenbaum and Rubin, PS-based methods have been widely used for drawing causal inferences in the behavioral and social sciences. However, the PS approach depends on the ignorability assumption: there are no unobserved confounders once observed covariates are taken into account. For…

Growth curve modeling provides a general framework for analyzing longitudinal data from social, behavioral, and educational sciences. Bayesian methods have been used to estimate growth curve models, in which priors need to be specified for unknown parameters. For the covariance parameter matrix, the inverse Wishart prior is most commonly used due…

The study uses the Wabash National Study on Liberal Arts Education to test how arts attendance in college facilitates growth in socially responsible leadership, diversity orientation, and the importance of political and social involvement. The study uses the Socially Responsible Leadership Scale (SRLS) and the Miville-Guzman Universality-Diversity…

Background: The effects of school socio-economic composition on student achievement growth trajectories have been a hot topic of discussion among politicians around the world for many years. However, the bulk of research investigating school socio-economic composition effects has been limited in important ways. Aims: In an attempt to overcome the…

Background: This study investigated the long-term effectiveness of Preventure, a selective personality-targeted prevention program, in reducing the uptake of alcohol, harmful use of alcohol, and alcohol-related harms over a 3-year period. Methods: A cluster randomized controlled trial was conducted to assess the effectiveness of Preventure.…

We examine bachelor's degree completion in the British Columbia post-secondary system, which is noted for its multiple pathways to graduation and ethnically diverse student population. Employing an administrative longitudinal dataset, we compare how the probability of degree completion by students enrolled at research-intensive,…

Using German data, we examined the effects of one specific type of acceleration--grade skipping--on academic performance. Prior research on the effects of acceleration has suffered from methodological restrictions, especially due to a lack of appropriate comparison groups and a priori measurements. For this reason, propensity score matching was…

The present longitudinal study addressed the ongoing debate regarding the benefits and risks of infant-parent cosleeping by examining associations between sleep arrangement patterns across the first year of life and infant and parent sleep, marital and family functioning, and quality of mothers' behavior with infants at bedtime. Patterns of infant…

Few issues in education threaten the nation as seriously as the present and growing shortage of teachers. Teacher attrition is high among teachers across the nation and is one of the most serious causes of teacher shortage (Ingersoll, 2004). As policy makers rush to address this problem, research is needed to examine the retention effects of…

The authors of this article analyzed data from the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 to determine the effect of receiving transition planning education and having a transition plan that specified needed postsecondary accommodations on the receipt of disability-specific services and generally available supports at the postsecondary level by…

Data from the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 were analyzed to determine the effect of receiving transition planning education and having a transition plan that specified needed postsecondary accommodations on the receipt of disability-specific services and generally available supports at the postsecondary level by students with…