Mark H. Salisbury

Exposure to Effective Instruction and College Student Persistence: A Multi-Institutional Replication and Extension

This study analyzed a multi-institutional and longitudinal data set to determine the impact of exposure to effective instruction on first-year persistence—defined as reenrolling for the second year of college at the same institution. Net of important confounding influences, exposure to effective instruction significantly increased the likelihood that the student would reenroll for the second year of college. The effect was mediated primarily through student satisfaction with the quality of the overall educational experience at the institution. These findings have implications for the role of the classroom experience in student persistence in higher education.

Liberal Arts Colleges and Good Practices in Undergraduate Education: Additional Evidence

Liberal arts colleges have prided themselves on providing students with a quality undergraduate education among a scholarly community who are interested in their holistic development. Past research has found students who attended liberal arts colleges more frequently experienced Chickering and Gamson’s (1987, 1991) good practices in undergraduate education than their peers. This study examined if this experience differed based on students’ background or precollege characteristics. Overall, we found students at liberal arts colleges who enter college with lower levels of parental education, tested precollege academic preparation, academic motivation, and high school involvement experienced these good practices at levels greater than their peers.

The Effects of Work on Leadership Development among First-Year College Students.

A substantial proportion of college students have always worked while pursuing their college degree. However, despite decades of research on working college students, very little consensus has emerged about the effect of work on college student development. This study analyzes Wabash National Study (WNS) data from 2,931 first-year students at 19 institutions to examine the effect of work on leadership skill development. Findings show that, after accounting for the effect of precollege characteristics and college engagement experiences, work can have a substantial positive effect on leadership development. Off-campus employment proved to be particularly influential even though extensive off-campus work simultaneously undercut the effect of peer interaction and cocurricular involvement on leadership. A substantial proportion of college students have always worked while pursuing their college degree. However, despite decades of research on working college students, very little consensus has emerged about the effect of work on college student development. This study analyzes Wabash National Study (WNS) data from 2,931 first-year students at 19 institutions to examine the effect of work on leadership skill development. Findings show that, after accounting for the effect of pre-college characteristics and college engagement experiences, work can have a substantial positive effect on leadership development. Off-campus employment proved to be particularly influential even though extensive off-campus work simultaneously undercut the effect of peer interaction and cocurricular involvement on leadership.

Some Complexities in the Effects of Diversity Experiences on Orientation Toward Social/Political Activism and Political Views in the First Year of College

This study analyzed longitudinal data from 19 institutions to determine if the net effects of diversity experiences on orientation toward social/political activism and political views are discernible as early as the fi rst year of postsecondary education. Statistically controlling for other infl uences, including precollege measures of each outcome, we found that interactional diversity positively infl uenced both social/political activism and liberal political views, and that classroom diversity had a small positive infl uence on social/political activism. More importantly, however, we also found that the magnitude of the effects of both interactional and classroom diversity is substantially determined by individual student precollege characteristics.

Design and Analysis in College Impact Research: Which Counts More?.

Over the last several decades student affairs and assessment scholars who study college impact have utilized a number of different research design and statistical procedures in an attempt to control for the characteristics and propensities that lead students to self-select themselves into a particular intervention or experience. This is particularly important because such characteristics and propensities may seriously confound any estimate of the effect of the intervention or experience itself. By far the most common method used in the college impact literature to date has been covariate adjustment, based on different multiple regression approaches (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005). This approach relies on statistical control to remove or partial out the confounding effects of student self-selection. Recently, however, there has been considerable criticism of covariate adjustment based on the argument that its estimate of the effect of an intervention or experience can be biased. Rather than relying on regression-based covariate adjustment techniques, a number of scholars have suggested the use of propensity score matching as a more effective analytical approach for controlling the effects of demographic, attitudinal, or other factors that might increase or decrease students’ likelihood of selfselecting into a given treatment of interest and, thereby, isolating the effect of the treatment itself (e.g., Reynolds & DesJardins, 2009; Schneider, Carnoy, Kilpatrick, Schmidt, & Shavelson, 2007). In this study we employ both covariate adjustment and propensity score matching to estimate the causal influence of an example intervention—the first year of attendance at a liberal arts college (as opposed to another type of 4-year institution). Specifically we estimated the effect of liberal arts college attendance on three cognitive outcomes. We examined the estimates yielded by these two analytical approaches under different research design assumptions—with and without a precollege measure of each outcome. Our purposes were to determine the comparability of causal estimates using covariate adjustment and propensity score matching, and to examine how these estimates might be affected when different research designs are employed to study college impact. The focus of the study was not specifically on understanding the effects of liberal arts colleges, rather, estimating of the effects of liberal arts colleges versus other 4-year institutions is used only as an example. The approaches we explored could have relevance to estimating of the effects of a broad range of between-college and withincollege interventions or experiences.

Diversity Experiences and Attitudes toward Literacy: Is There a Link?.

This article reports on a study that explored whether diversity experiences influence students’ attitudes toward literary activities during the first year of college. Interactional diversity and attending a diversity workshop had a positive net influence on the outcome measure. Exposure to curricular diversity, however, had only a chance effect on the dependent variable.