More trend data from their annual reports: There is a clear decline in the past five years. While some of this is probably due to institutions using the NSSE on a less than annual basis, I think there is a real decline here (the fact that schools may be using it less frequently is also an indicator of how useful they are finding it). My prediction is that this decline will continue as...
College student survey response rates continue to decline
Depressingly, average institutional response rates for the NSSE have dropped over 10 percentage points during the last decade, to 30% in their most recent annual report. While the content of the NSSE leaves much to be desired, their response rates are a good indicator of what is happening across the country on college campuses. Some of this decline is probably due to survey fatigue; some may be...
Matching and complex survey data
Several people have asked me about using propensity score matching with complex surveys, and whether/how weights, PSUs and strata should be taken into account. This paper explains how to handle these issues.
Narcissists in education: an empirical analysis of tweets
This is excellent:
Should we be using multiple imputation? Perhaps not
Several years ago I took a missing data workshop from Paul Allison, where he extolled the virtues of MI. He has apparently changed his stance on this, and his intellect is such that we should be paying close attention to what he is saying:
Measuring college student learning in the UNC system
The General Education Council of the UNC General Administration asked me to give a presentation on issues around measuring student learning in higher education. Slides are here.
The state has adopted an ambitious strategic plan; one of their stated strategies is “Become a national leader in the assessment of student learning gains” (p. 44).
A brief introduction to propensity score matching
I recently started a quant methods working group at the College of Education here, and gave a presentation on propensity score matching for people who had heard about it and wanted to know more.
The average length of dissertations
Interesting graphic (via Tyler Cowen).
Protected: Field experiments in postsecondary research
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Why use survey weights?
I just came across an old paper by Kish that does a nice job describing some of the basic issues around survey weights:
WEIGHTING: WHY, WHEN, AND HOW?