TPC-Journal-V6-Issue2

The Professional Counselor /Volume 6, Issue 2 192 752 agreed to participate and were asked to provide sophomore enrollment lists. To deal with non- response bias, ELS conducted analyses in conjunction with weighting adjustment to reduce but not completely eliminate all bias. In the second step of sample selection, 26 students were selected from these lists using a stratified systematic sampling of students selected on a flow basis (Ingels et al., 2007). To provide non-academic data, participants completed paper-and-pencil, self-administered questionnaires usually done in the school setting. The ELS Web site provides actual copies of the questionnaires. Participants Participants included students who participated in all three waves (2002, 2004 and 2006) of ELS (U.S. Department of Education, 2008) and who enrolled in either a two-year or four-year institution upon graduation from high school. The enrollment condition was necessary since the study is an investigation into those who persisted in college versus those who did not. This resulted in a final N of 7,271. Participants also included sophomore math and English teachers. The student participants were 54% female and 46% male. Their ethnic identification was 1% Native American, 5% Asian, 15% African American, 13% Latino, 62% White, and 4% Multiracial. Since not all of the originally selected schools participated in the study’s three waves, the data were weighted to adjust for this and for probabilities that were unequal in the selection of schools and students (Ingels, Pratt, Rogers, Siegel, & Stutts, 2005). There are two main steps in the weighting process. First is the calculation of unadjusted weights as the inverse of the probabilities of selection; second, these weights are adjusted to compensate for non-response (Curtin, Ingels, Wu, & Heuer, 2002) and result in a relative weight derived by dividing the panel weight of the data base by the average weight of the sample. Variables The study employed a total of nine predictor variables, seven categorical and two interval. Categorical variables . Four of the categorical variables were yes/no questions, two of which were teacher-reported. Both the student’s math and English teachers were asked: “Does this student talk with you outside of class about school work, plans for after high school or personal matters?” ELS limits its survey to only the math and English teachers. Another yes/no question included asking the students if they had gone to the school counselor for college entrance information, and the fourth asked the students whether they had performed any unpaid, volunteer, community service work during the past two years. The remaining three variables were the result of categorizing the number of hours spent weekly working at a job, doing homework and performing extracurricular activities. As regards to hours worked at a job, the original 10-category variable was collapsed into four categories: “none,” “low” (1 to 10 hours per week), “moderate” (11 to 20 hours per week), and “high” (21 or more hours per week). Hours spent weekly doing homework in or out of school were categorized as “very low” (none to less than 1 hour), “low” (1 to 6 hours), “moderate” (7 to 15 hours), and “high” (16 or more hours). Time spent weekly in extracurricular activities was categorized as “none,” “low” (less than 1 hour to 4 hours), “moderate” (5 to 14 hours), and “high” (15 or more hours). The two teacher-reported variables were from sophomore year, while the rest were asked of students in their senior year. Interval variables . Created from individual items in the database, the study employed two composite, interval variables: academic and social support. These variables were selected based upon the research of Pascarella and Terenzini (2005), Kuh (2007), and Hu (2011) who identified these constructs as being integral to a student’s success in higher education. The academic support variable was composed of three Likert-scaled items: (1) “Among your close friends, how important is it to them that they study?”; (2) “Among your close friends, how important is it that they finish