"Aya: The Enduring Spirit of Black Women in Higher Education" is a research study that sought out to better understand the experiences of Black women inside of higher education. Building off of two previous unpublished research studies that focused on the resources that enable Black women to stay in their programs, this study took a more…

Purpose: The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to understand and systematically describe the essence of the experience of professional staff members at a public university who received implicit bias training (IBT) that includes the Implicit Association Test (IAT).Theoretical Framework. Appreciative Inquiry (AI) was used,…

Academic advisors are crucial to the success of students who attend higher education institutions (e.g., Himes, 2014; Paul & Fitzpatrick, 2015; Smith, 2005). They guide students to complete their degrees in a timely progression and serve as a contact for students to help increase a sense of belonging on college campuses. Higher education…

Background: The generalizability of a study's results continues to be at the forefront of concerns in evaluation research in education (Tipton & Olsen, 2018). Over the past decade, statisticians have developed methods, mainly based on propensity scores, to improve generalizations in the absence of random sampling (Stuart et al., 2011; Tipton,…

This study was conducted to further research into the impact of student-group item parameter drift (SIPD) --referred to as subpopulation item parameter drift in previous research-- on ability estimates and proficiency classification accuracy when occurring in the discrimination parameter of a 2-PL item response theory (IRT) model. Using Monte…

In the present study, using complex network analysis, we conducted a one-year including two semesters to investigate the effect of social network intervention on college students' social perception biases. One hundred and seventy college students participated in this study. Social network intervention was implemented in the second semester.…

Children and young people internationally have been demonstrating their concern about the inadequacy of adult responses to the climate crisis. These young people recognise that their wellbeing and that of the planet is imperilled by this inaction. Furthermore, schools should be taking the lead in educating and supporting children and young people…

A simulation study was conducted to investigate the heuristics of the SIBTEST procedure and how it compares with ETS classification guidelines used with the Mantel-Haenszel procedure. Prior heuristics have been used for nearly 25 years, but they are based on a simulation study that was restricted due to computer limitations and that modeled item…

This study offers an approach to testing for differential item functioning (DIF) in a recently developed measurement framework, referred to as "D"-scoring method (DSM). Under the proposed approach, called "P-Z" method of testing for DIF, the item response functions of two groups (reference and focal) are compared by…

To present time-varying evidence, cumulative meta-analysis (CMA) updates results of previous meta-analyses to incorporate new study results. We investigate the properties of CMA, suggest possible improvements and provide the first in-depth simulation study of the use of CMA and CUSUM methods for detection of temporal trends in random-effects…

With the increasing use of automated scores in operational testing settings comes the need to understand the ways in which they can yield biased and unfair results. In this paper, we provide a brief survey of some of the ways in which the predictive methods used in automated scoring can lead to biased, and thus unfair automated scores. After…

This dissertation address two significant challenges in the causal inference workflow for Big Observational Data. The first is designing Big Observational Data with high-dimensional and heterogeneous covariates. The second is performing uncertainty quantification for estimates of causal estimands that are obtained from the application of black box…

This auto ethnographic poetic inquiry is fashioned as a dialogue between Kristin Heavey and Kessey Jemmott, on topics of race and embodiment. Heavey is a white mother of a bi racial daughter in the United States of America; Jemmott is a Black Trinbagonian, living in Canada. These vignettes emerged from a collaborative performance piece, drawing…

Growing attention to Black men's development and outcomes has encouraged scholars to further consider how the intersection of race and gender influence these students' collegiate experiences (McGuire, Berhanu, Davis, & Harper, 2014; Pelzer, 2016). However, "it is one thing to study Black men's gendered experiences (e.g., gendered racism)…

Many commonplace stories, including the authors and those they have heard, substantiate a critical and undeniable truth: marginalized and underrepresented students' development through the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) pipeline is centered on race and gender and is impacted by (un)intentional and (in)formal interactions…