Persistence toward bachelor degree completion of students in Family and Consumer Sciences

College Student Journal, Sept, 2006 by Lee Blecher

First Year GPA (YR1GPA): Students' grade point average during their initial year as reported by the student. Responses were coded from 1=mostly Ds and below though 7=mostly As.

Percent Months Enrolled Full-Time (FTPCT): A continuous variable that indicates the percent of months enrolled full-time, as opposed to part-time, during the first year.

Hours Worked While Enrolled (HRSWRK): A continuous variable that indicates the average hours a student worked per week while enrolled during the first year.

Transfer Status (TRANSFER): A dichotomous variable that indicates whether a student had or had not transferred to another institution during the time frame of this study. Transfer status was reported whether the student had attended postsecondary education continuously or non-continuously, and included both horizontal and reverse transfers.

6-year System Persistence (PERSIST): A dichotomous variable that summarizes the status of students at the end six years with respect to whether they were or were not system persisters. Students were coded as system persisters if they had either completed or were still enrolled in a four-year institution after six years regardless of their transfer status, or enrollment patterns. Students were considered non-persisters if, after six years, they were no longer attending a four-year institution and had not completed a bachelor's degree. For the purposes of this study, students who transferred in a reverse fashion to a two-year institution and did not return to the four-year institution were considered sys tern non-persisters regardless if whether they did or did not complete a two year degree program.

Data Analysis

The statistical techniques used for analyzing the data included descriptive statistics (frequencies and distributions), plus means and standard deviations for selected variables. Bivariate statistical techniques (correlations, t-tests, and cross-tabulations) were utilized to determine the degree of relationship each of the predictor variables had to the dichotomous criterion variable, system persistence.

A step-wise multiple discriminant analysis was used to determine whether the independent variables utilized in this study could successfully predict whether students would or would not within the six year period of this study persist toward bachelor degree completion. For this analysis, the group of students who persisted was randomly reduced so that there would approximately be an equal number of persisters and nonpersisters in each group.

Please note that when stratified sampling, as opposed to simple random sampling, techniques are used as was the case with the BPS data set utilized for this study, standardized statistical software packages such as SPSS tend to underestimate standard error (Adelman, 1999). To compensate for this tendency, a more conservative evaluation criterion was applied by requiring all parameters to be tested at the p < .001 level (Thomas & Heck, 2001). In addition, all t values were adjusted downward by the average design effect of 1.43 (Wine et al. 2002). Despite these suggested modifications, the reader is encouraged to review the size of the relationships between variables when interpreting the significance of the results.