The Use of Matching Methods in Higher Education Research: Answering Whether Attendance at a 2-Year Institution Results in Differences in Educational Attainment

Reynolds, C. Lockwood; DesJardins, Stephen L.

doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-9628-0_2

Cited by 83 publications

(80 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…In order for a propensity score matching analysis to provide plausible estimates, it must adhere to three assumptions: conditional independence, common support, and covariate balance (Reynolds and DesJardins 2009).…”

Section: Propensity Score Matching: Model Fitmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does Teacher Encouragement Influence Students’ Educational Progress? A Propensity-Score Matching Analysis

Alcott

2017

Res High Educ

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Theory suggests that teacher encouragement can aid students' educational progress, but there are not yet quantitative inferential studies that assess its longer-term impact. With data from the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE), I use propensity-score matching to investigate whether encouragement influences the likelihood of students enrolling in (1) advanced high school (A-level) courses and (2) a university degree course. Model estimates suggest that encouragement does have a significant positive impact on both outcomes. In addition, I investigate whether encouragement effects vary according to parental education and the given student's prior academic achievement; it appears that the impact is greatest for those students in the middle third of academic achievement as well as those with lower levels of parental education. These findings have important policy implications, especially as it seems that teacher encouragement has the greatest influence on those students most likely to be on the margin for university attendance.

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Section: Propensity Score Matching: Model Fitmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does Teacher Encouragement Influence Students’ Educational Progress? A Propensity-Score Matching Analysis

Alcott

2017

Res High Educ

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“…37 This implies that the difference between treatment and control groups should be no more than 20 percent of a standard deviation. Table 3 presents the results of the logistic regression analysis of using library resources.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Impact of Library Resource Utilization on Undergraduate Students’ Academic Performance: A Propensity Score Matching Design

Kot

Jones²

2015

CRL

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. © 2015 Felly Chiteng Kot and Jennifer L. Jones, Attribution-NonCommercial (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0 /) CC BY-NCThis study uses three cohorts of first-time, full-time undergraduate students (N=8,652) at a large, metropolitan, public research university to examine the impact of student use of three library resources (workstations, study rooms, and research clinics) on academic performance. To deal with self-selection bias and estimate this impact more accurately, we used propensity score matching. Using this unique approach allowed us to construct treatment and control groups with similar background characteristics. We found that using a given library resource was associated with a small, but also meaningful, gain in first-term grade point average, net of other factors.mid budget cuts and legislative pressure, academic institutions are increasingly seeking ways to foster student success. Colleges and universities often create and/or expand support services and programmatic interventions, with the hope that these services will yield positive returns, such as higher student persistence rates and better grades. Student support services, in turn, are increasingly asked to demonstrate their worth in terms of contributing to the achievement of institutional outcomes. Academic libraries are not an exception.

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“…In recent decades social scientists have expressed increasing concern about the validity and reliability of research examining the effect of a particular program, activity, or experience -often termed "treatment" -in observational data where participation in the treatment is not randomly assigned (Dehejia & Wahba, 1999;LaLonde, 1986;Reynolds & DesJardins, 2009;Rosenbaum & Rubin, 1983;Rubin, 2001Rubin, , 2008Schneider, Carnoy, Kilpatrick, Schmidt, & Shavelson, 2007). This concern arises primarily from the inability of traditional covariate adjustment methods to account for unobserved characteristics upon which those who select to participate in the treatment of interest might systematically differ from those who chose not to participate.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This new variable is then used to examine the effect of the treatment across cases that share a similar propensity for selecting into the treatment, thus minimizing the potential bias introduced by the observed "selection effect." Although some postsecondary education researchers have attempted to show the importance of this method for examining a range of important research questions using observational data (Brand & Halaby, 2006;Reynolds & DesJardins, 2009;Titus, 2007), other scholars have questioned the perceived uniform effectiveness of propensity score matching to produce more accurate estimates and have shown that this approach may not always improve the accuracy of the findings and is vulnerable to a range of research design and analysis decisions (Padgett, Salisbury, An, & Pascarella, in press;Peikes, Moreno, & Orzol, 2008;Shadish, Clark, & Steiner, 2008;Steiner, Cook, Shadish, and Clark, in press). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In recent years, scholars of educational research have strongly encouraged higher education researchers to apply increasingly rigorous and more precisely appropriate analytical methods in postsecondary education research, particularly in examining the effect of programs or "treatments" where selection occurs nonrandomly, i.e., students choose whether or not to participate (Reynolds & Desjardins, 2009;Schneider et al, 2007). Therefore, in addition to covariate adjustment methods, the current study also examined the effect of study abroad on intercultural competence using a propensity score matching method available through the psmatch2 command in the STATA statistical software package (Leuven & Sianesi, 2003).…”

Section: Propensity Score Matchingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Effect of Study Abroad on Intercultural Competence Among Undergraduate College Students

Salisbury

Pascarella

2013

Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice

145

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During the last decade higher education organizations and educational policy makers have substantially increased efforts to incentivize study abroad participation.These efforts are grounded in the longstanding belief that study abroad participation improves intercultural competence -an educational outcome critical in a globalized 21 st century economy. Yet decades of evidence that appear to support this claim are repeatedly limited by a series of methodological weaknesses including small homogenous samples, an absence of longitudinal study design, no accounting for potential selection bias, and the lack of controls for potentially confounding demographic and college experience variables. Thus, a major competing explanation for differences found between students who do and do not study abroad continues to be the possibility that these differences existed prior to participation.The current study sought to determine the effect of study abroad on intercultural competence among 1,593 participants of the 2006 cohort of the Wabash National Study on Liberal Arts Education. The Wabash National Study is a longitudinal study of undergraduates that gathered pre-and post-test measures on numerous educational outcomes, an array of institutional and self-reported pre-college characteristics, and a host of college experiences. The current study employed both propensity score matching and covariate adjustment methods to account for pre-college characteristics, college experiences, the selection effect, and the clustered nature of the data to both crossvalidate findings and provide guidance for future research.Under such rigorous analytic conditions, this study found that study abroad generated a statistically significant positive effect on intercultural competence; an effect 2 that appears to be general rather than conditional. Moreover, both covariate adjustment and propensity score matching methods generated similar results. In examining the effect of study abroad across the three constituent subscales of the overall measure of intercultural competence, this study found that study abroad influences students' diversity of contact but has no statistically significant effect on relativistic appreciation of cultural differences or comfort with diversity. Finally, the results of this study suggest that the relationship between study abroad and intercultural competence is one of selection and accentuation, holding important implications for postsecondary policy makers, higher education institutions, and college impact scholars. iii What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. These efforts are grounded in the longstanding belief that study abroad participation improves intercultural competence -an educational outcome critical in a globalized 21 st century economy. Yet decades of evidence that appear to support this claim are repeatedly limited by a series of methodological weaknesses including small homogenous samples, an absence of longitudinal study design, no accoun...

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The Use of Matching Methods in Higher Education Research: Answering Whether Attendance at a 2-Year Institution Results in Differences in Educational Attainment

Cited by 83 publications

References 42 publications

Does Teacher Encouragement Influence Students’ Educational Progress? A Propensity-Score Matching Analysis

Does Teacher Encouragement Influence Students’ Educational Progress? A Propensity-Score Matching Analysis

The Impact of Library Resource Utilization on Undergraduate Students’ Academic Performance: A Propensity Score Matching Design

The Effect of Study Abroad on Intercultural Competence Among Undergraduate College Students

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