The withdrawal of students from Principles
of Chemistry courses
is a major problem for STEM retention and graduation rates, which
are topics of national interest. In order to implement effective intervention
methods to reduce withdrawal rates, we must understand the underlying
reasons why students withdraw. This paper presents a multimethod study
on student withdrawals from Principles of Chemistry from summer 2015
to fall 2018 semester. Eleven students who withdrew were interviewed,
and thematic analysis and cluster analysis were used to interpret
interview data to understand their reasons for withdrawing. Practical
reasons included course structure, student–faculty relationship,
student personal factors, chemistry content, and study strategies
and academic support. Four themes identified from thematic analysis
(hopeless, uncomfortable, demotivated, and overwhelmed) provided deeper
insight into the affective emotional factors that contributed to the
withdrawals. Cluster analysis revealed natural groupings of student
responses and motivations, suggesting that targeted interventions
can be developed for different groups. To ensure that our results
are comparable to previous studies on course withdrawals, students
who withdrew were analyzed according to demographic data. Results
revealed that some groups had higher withdrawal rates compared to
students who passed the course, which may reflect different levels
of academic preparedness and thus an advantage/disadvantage. The analyses
presented here will be of value when considering intervention approaches
to reduce withdrawals from challenging courses.