The popularity of online student surveys has been associated with greater item nonresponse. This chapter presents research aimed at exploring what factors might help minimize item nonresponse, such as altering online survey page length and using progress indicators.

Estimating the effect of campus math tutoring support, this study demonstrates the use of propensity score weighted and matched-data analysis and examines the correspondence with results from parametric regression analysis.

Item Response Theory (IRT) is a measurement theory that is ideal for scale and test development in institutional research, but it is not without its drawbacks. This chapter provides an overview of IRT, describes an example of its use, and highlights the pros and cons of using IRT in applied settings.

Most institutional research (IR) practitioners lack access to direct measures of longitudinal student learning, let alone assessment instruments systematically embedded into the curriculum that yield representative cognitive gain data controlling for student motivation. Typically, measures of student learning growth rest on findings from survey…

Decades of research in survey methodology and psychology have yielded important insights about how to create effective and valid survey instruments. As Porter (in press) has argued convincingly, college student surveys often fall well short of these standards by placing unrealistic demands on students' memory and by assuming that students readily…

Over the past twenty years, a substantial body of research has accumulated that suggests ethnic and racial diversity among college students yields significant educational benefits, including "steeper learning curves" and enhanced cognitive skills, and improved persistence. To improve one's understanding of how diversity may influence student…

Promotion of diversity based on ethnic and racial identity of both students and faculty has become a central tenet in U.S. higher education, permeating everything from curricular development to student and faculty recruitment, and from campus infrastructural planning to articulation of an institution's strategic mission. References to diversity on…

Among the varied analytical challenges institutional researchers face, examining faculty pay may be one of the most vexing. Although the literature on faculty compensation analysis dates back to the 1970s (Loeb and Ferber, 1971; Gordon, Morton, and Braden, 1974; Scott, 1977; Braskamp and Johnson, 1978; McLaughlin, Smart, and Montgomery, 1978),…

Scholarship on factors that promote or hinder academic success of college students abounds, much of it focusing on learning gains and institutional retention of first-year students (Reason, Terenzini, and Domingo, 2006; Terenzini and Reason, 2005; Pascarella and Terenzini, 2005; Braxton, 2000; Astin, 1993; Tinto, 1987). More recently,…

Focusing on student retention and time to degree completion, this study illustrates how institutional researchers may benefit from the power of predictive analyses associated with data-mining tools. The following are appended: (1) Predictors; and (2) Variable Definitions. (Contains 5 figures.)