This brief examines student psychological well-being, an important issue of growing interest in U.S. higher education. Extensive research focused on student involvement in college suggested that quality involvement leads to higher levels of student learning and development. This study for psychological well-being was measured using the Ryff Scales…

For this study we considered the influence of binge drinking behavior in college on students' critical thinking gains. Findings suggest that binge drinking has a negative influence on students' critical thinking gains over 4 years of college and that this effect was driven by students with the lowest levels of precollege critical thinking. In both…

We use a longitudinal dataset to explore the effect of fraternity/sorority membership on political orientation and social/political activism. After controlling for a variety of potentially confounding variables, including pretests on the dependent variables, fraternity and sorority members were significantly less liberal that their unaffiliated…

This study examined the effects of good teaching practices on post-baccalaureate degree aspirations using logistic regression techniques on a multi-institutional, longitudinal sample of students at 4-year colleges and universities in the USA. We examined whether eight good teaching practices (non-classroom interactions with faculty, prompt…

International educators have long asserted that study abroad improves students' intercultural competence. However, the evidence is less clear than the rhetoric suggests. Examining longitudinal data from a national study of college students, this study explores the impact of study abroad on intercultural competence while accounting for a host…

This study estimates the effects of a deep approaches to learning scale and its subscales on measures of students' critical thinking, need for cognition, and positive attitudes toward literacy, controlling for pre-college scores for the outcomes and other covariates. Results suggest reflection is critical to making gains across the outcomes.

The scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education is concerned with advancing pedagogical knowledge and teaching practice to improve student learning and associated outcomes in higher education. This study used data from the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education to examine the effects of peer learning experiences on gains in…

The current paper used data from the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education--a longitudinal, pretest/posttest design--to estimate the effects of participation in the ten "high-impact" educational practices put forth and endorsed by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) on a variety of liberal arts…

Using longitudinal data from the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education, this study measured the impact of first-year seminars on college students' life-long learning orientations. The findings suggest that first-year seminars enhance students' life-long learning orientations and that the effect of first-year seminars is mediated through…

We use a longitudinal national dataset to explore the direct and conditional effects of fraternity/sorority membership on students' educational outcomes in the 4th year of college. Controlling for a variety of potentially confounding variables, including pretest measures of the outcomes, we find no direct effect of fraternity/sorority membership…

Regarding collegiate experiences, several studies have examined the effects of diversity experiences on educational, psychosocial, and other college outcomes (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005). However, there exists a limited body of research, which has focused on the impact of those types of experiences on leadership development among students…

We explored the effects of fraternity and sorority membership on first-year students' development across various liberal arts educational outcomes at 11 institutions. Although many educators perceive fraternities and sororities as anti-intellectual organizations, fraternity and sorority members in this study did not differ from their unaffiliated…

With the purpose of gaining a better understanding of the impacts that attending a work college may have on students while in college and up to 25 years later, this study estimated the effects of graduating from a group of work colleges on alumni educational and employment outcomes. Based on an overall sample of 7083 alumni from 5 work colleges,…

Because of limitations on research controls, research designs in postsecondary education are often complex and can involve many independent and potentially confounding variables. What is needed to adequately address such research questions is a flexible and powerful data-analytic approach, and the general linear regression model is recommended.…