The engagement and retention of commencing students is a longstanding issue in higher education, particularly with the implementation of the widening student participation agenda. The early weeks of the first semester are especially critical to student engagement and early attrition. This study investigated the perceived early transition needs of…

Background: Student learning theory (SLT) has established associations between students' approaches to learning and their perceptions of the learning environment. SLT may provide a useful framework for researching student learning within the Japanese tertiary sector. Aims: The study aims to explore and validate the Course Experience Questionnaire…

Using the example of responses from civil engineering students at a very highly ranked participating university, this guide demonstrates the importance of comparative data when using student questionnaire data for undergraduate academic program review. It also emphasizes the advantage of using factor structures for better questionnaire-based…

The present research was aimed to: 1) develop the components and indicators of organizational effectiveness for public higher education institutions under the Ministry of Tourism and Sports, Thailand, and 2) develop organizational effectiveness evaluation system for these institutions. The sample included total 41 participants comprising…

The United States has become more ethnically diverse, and this trend is projected to continue. Despite an increase in minority group enrollment on campus in the United States during the last decade, their rates of degree completion are not keeping pace (NCES, 2007). The question that remains to be answered is: What factors are unique to minority…

The research training environment has been described as all the forces in graduate training programs that reflect attitudes toward research and science. Examined the factor structure of the Research Training Environment Scale-Revised in a sample of 270 undergraduate students. Analyses suggest that an instructional dimension and an interpersonal…

The basic considerations that should be examined in performing an exploratory descriptive factor analysis of a communication concept are described in this paper. Factor analysis is a statistical technique designed to identify the fundamental, common elements within a pool of variables. For example, imagine asking students twenty questions all…

This article presents a semantic differential called Connotative Aspects of Epistemological Beliefs (CAEB) developed to assess university students' epistemological beliefs with adjective pairs such as dynamic-static and objective-subjective. After discussing the theoretical background, data are reported from two validation studies. The aim of the…

The causal relationships among the three presences in the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework are explored and tested in this paper. The CoI framework has been used extensively in the research and practice of online and blended learning contexts. With the development of a survey instrument based on the CoI framework, it is possible to test the…

Ego development data were collected from two groups of subjects. One group consisted of 175 students from junior high, senior high, and college. The second group was comprised of 136 adults who were either teachers and administrators of a medium-sized public school system, or long-time employees of a large chemical manufacturing corporation.…

The hierarchical clustering technique was used to differentiate college dropouts from persisters, and to determine how student clusters differ from one another on relevant outcome variables. Subjects were 618 freshmen who entered a community college with the intention of completing a two-year associate degree. There were 432 persisters who…

To investigate degree of variation in factor structures produced using different factor analytic techniques, two large data sets were analyzed using four factor analytic approaches (theoretical conventional, theoretical conventional-confirmatory, modified confirmatory, and pure confirmatory). Data sets included third through seventh graders and…

Conceptualizes and examines the validity of a measure of cognitive communication competence, involving four temporarily discreet mental processes. Indicates a five-factor solution not identical with the original conceptualized dimensions, which reflects a temporal separation of cognitions but also reveals different types of communication…

Describes research on interpersonal expectancy effects, concentrating on classroom settings. Results of a meta-analysis of 448 studies of interpersonal expectancy effects are summarized. A 10-point model for the study of such effects and evidence supporting a 4-factor theory of the mediation of teacher expectancy effects are presented. (SLD)

A study examined the extent to which a 19-item short form of the Speech Evaluation Instrument (SEI) is a reliable instrument, what factor structure emerges from the analysis, and how that factor structure compares to that reported for the 30-item long form of the SEI. Subjects, 606 undergraduates enrolled in speech communications classes at two…