This second volume of "Proving and Improving" collects essays from the First-Year Assessment Listserv, which is hosted by the Policy Center on the First Year of College and the National Resource Center. Like the first volume, this one brings together the nation's leading experts and practitioners of assessment in the first college year. They offer overviews of commercially available instruments and provide case studies of qualitative assessment strategies. The monograph also includes a comprehensive introduction by Randy Swing, describing strategies for implementing an effective assessment effort, and a typology of assessment instruments that allows readers to identify and compare instruments geared to the issues and programs they want to assess. This volume commences with a Preface (Mary Stuart Hunter); Overview of Essays (Randy L. Swing); and Introduction to First-Year Assessment (Randy L. Swing). It then divides into six parts and 37 articles, as follows. Part 1, "Institutional Records," contains: (1) Introducing the Data Audit and Analysis Toolkit (Karen Paulson); (2) Your First Stop for Information: The Office of Institutional Research (Karen Webber Bauer); (3) Using EnrollmentSearch to Track First-Year Success (John P. Ward); (4) Using Archived Course Records for First-Year Program Assessment (Debora L. Scheffel and Marie Revak); and (5) Freshman Absence-Based Intervention at The University of Mississippi (Catherine Anderson). Part 2, "Student Voices," contains: (6) Basics of Focus Groups (Libby V. Morris); (7) Looking at the First-Year Experience Qualitatively and Longitudinally (Marcia J. Belcheir); (8) Using "Think Alouds" to Evaluate Deep Understanding (Lendol Calder and Sarah-Eva Carlson); (9) The Promise Audit: Who's Promising What to Students (Marian Allen Claffey and Ned Scott Laff); (10) A Case Study on Developing Faculty Buy-In for Assessment (Lissa Yogan); and (12) The First-Year Prompts Project: A Qualitative Research Study Revisited (Elizabeth Hodges and Jean M. Yerian). Part 3, "End of Program/Course Evaluations," contains: (13) Using Interactive Focus Groups for Course and Program Assessments (Barbara J. Millis); and (14) The College Classroom Environment Scale (Roberta Jessen and Judith Patton). Part 4, "Surveys," contains: (15) The CIRP Freshman Survey and YFCY: Blending Old and New Tools to Improve Assessment of First-Year Students (Linda J. Sax and Shannon K. Gilmartin); (16) Survey Data as Part of First-Year Assessment Efforts: Using the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) Annual Freshman Survey (J. Daniel House); (17) What Students Expect May Not Be What They Get: The PEEK (Perceptions, Expectations, Emotions and Knowledge about College) (Claire Ellen Weinstein, Cynthia A. King, Peggy Pei-Hsuan Hsieh, Taylor W. Acee and David R. Palmer); (18) Assessing Student Expectations of College: The College Student Expectations Questionnaire (Robert M. Gonyea); (19) The College Student Experiences Questionnaire: Assessing Quality of Effort and Perceived Gains in Student Learning (Michael J. Siegel); (20) The Community College Student Experience Questionnaire (Patricia H. Murrell); (21) Knowing How to Learn is as Important as Knowing What to Learn: The Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (Clarie Ellen Weinstein, Angela L. Julie, Stephanie B. Corliss, YoonJung Cho, and David R. Palmer); (22) The Retention Management System: Assessing for Early Intervention (Lana Low and Beth Richter); (23) The Study Behavior Inventory (Leonard B. Bliss); (24) The College Success Factors Index (Edmond C. Hallberg and Garrick Davis); (25) The National Survey of Student Engagement: Benchmarks of Effective Educational Practice (John Hayek); (26) Benchmarking Effective Educational Practice in Community Colleges (Kay M. McClenney); (27) What Matters in First-Year Seminars (Randy L. Swing); (28) Looking at High-Risk Behaviors (John Pryor); and (29) A More Precise Approach to Assessing Student Satisfaction (Julie L. Bryant). Part 5, "Cognitive Tests," contains: (30) Critical Thinking Assessment: Challenges and Options (Marc Cutright); (31) Evaluating General Education Outcomes: College BASE-lining Your First-Year Students (Pamela A. Humphreys); (32) CAAP General Education Assessment Program (David A. Lutz); and (33) The Cognitive Level and Quality Writing Assessment Instrument (Teresa L. Flateby). Part 6, "Trait Inventories," contains: (34) Hope Scale: A Measurement of Willpower and Waypower (Jerry Pattengale); (35) What are Learning Styles? Can We Identify Them? What is Their Place in an Assessment Program? (Linda Suskie); (36) Assessing the First-Year of College: Some Concluding Thoughts (Tracy L. Skipper and Marla Mamrick); and (37) Typology of Instruments (Randy L. Swing). [Individual chapters have references.]