This quantitative study examines the relationships among Scranton City School district students' scores on standards-based report cards and end-of-year TCAP (Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Plan) mathematics scores. Specifically, relationship levels between teacher-reported levels of mastery by students on five state-directed mathematics…

The National Youth in Transition Database (NYTD) snapshots offer a glimpse of National and State trends for young people who are receiving Independent Living Services through state child welfare programs. This Outcomes Data Snapshot shows statistical trends about who those young people are, their experiences and outcomes for those both in care and…

The Certified Association Executive credential is a professional certification designed to identify association management professionals committed to a wide range of knowledge essential to the management of an association. Though the CAE has existed since 1960, no research exists related to the motivations of those individuals that chose to purse…

Volunteers have always been essential to the success of 4-H youth development programs. However, the number of available volunteers has declined. Although this decline is not new, it is imperative to recruit and retain adult volunteers for youth programming. Researchers sought to describe characteristics of current Texas volunteers and identify…

Purpose: Children develop social-pragmatic understanding with the help of sensory, cognitive, and linguistic functions by interacting with other people. This study aimed to explore (a) associations between auditory, demographic, cognitive, and linguistic factors and social-pragmatic understanding in children who use bilateral hearing aids (BiHAs)…

Pulling from a sample of students from rural backgrounds (n = 1847), multilevel modeling was used to explore how the academic campus climate can predict sense of belonging for rural students. Findings offer insights into how certain perceptions, behaviors, and institutional characteristics may influence sense of belonging. For instance, higher…

We utilized Global Adult Tobacco Survey data to examine singlestick purchases and related demographic characteristics in 10 African countries (Botswana, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Mauritania, Senegal, South Africa, Uganda and Tanzania). Results show the weighted percentages and prevalence ratios with predicted marginal means to evaluate…

School learning environments play important roles in students' lives. But when do these relationships form? Previous research on middle school students has identified a strong association between student socio-demographics, school characteristics, and achievement. Yet, few studies have investigated the origins of these associations. This study…

In California, Filipina/x/os continue to be overrepresented in the nursing workforce, with the percentage of nurses identifying as Filipino increasing from 13.4% in 1993 to 20.6% in 2018 (Spetz et al., 2018). While a particular ethnic group being overrepresented in a certain industry is not problematic on its own, certain careers come with greater…

A person-centered approach identified five empirically unobserved student profiles of first-time full-time university students who shared similar academic patterns, performance measures, and demographic characteristics. "Honors" and "Flourishing" classes tended to graduate within 6 years of attempting their first-college…

This dissertation contributes to the discussion of what contributes to school district rankings in the state of Ohio. It uses Latent Profile Analysis to explore different variables at the contextual and district level as they correspond to Ohio's Performance Index academic measure and Value-Added academic measure. Results show that contextual…

In England, students apply to universities using teacher-predicted grades instead of their final end-of-school A-level examination results. Predicted rather than achieved grades therefore determine how ambitiously students apply to and receive offers from the most selective courses. The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS)…

Adaptive survey design refers to using targeted procedures to recruit different sampled cases. This technique strives to reduce bias and variance of survey estimates by trying to recruit a larger and more balanced set of respondents. However, it is not well understood how adaptive design can improve data and survey estimates beyond the…

To help students cope with the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, higher education institutions offered students flexible grading policies that blended traditional letter grades with alternative grading options such as the pass--fail or credit--no credit options. This study conducted an in-depth analysis of the flexible grading policy at a…

Predictive analytics methods in education are seeing widespread use and are producing increasingly accurate predictions of students' outcomes. With the increased use of predictive analytics comes increasing concern about fairness for specific subgroups of the population. One approach that has been proposed to increase fairness is using demographic…