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Center for Retention Studies Principles
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The Center is founded on the following principles.
All aspects of the University's infrastructure contribute to student retention and attrition and are, thus, worthy of examination by those engaged in the work of the institution.
Collaborative data collection, analysis, and reporting are more valuable to the individual and the institution than isolated, individual efforts.
- Staff working in specific contexts (the context experts) come together with staff skilled in assessment techniques (the process experts) to form partnerships. The context expert contributes significantly to the validity of the findings by identifying the relevant issues to address and the data most representative of the issues. The process expert contributes significantly to the standardization of the examination by making the study procedures explicit, and thus, giving the study findings credibility to the academic audience.
- This collaboration is not intended to turn context experts into process experts or process experts into context experts. Rather, it is the intent to optimize each contributor's involvement in the study outcome and thereby produce a stronger set of findings that have potential for institutional change.
Continuous dialogue throughout the study process affirms the perspective that this is a community of contributors and builds consensus on institutional values and priorities.
- This dialogue increases the potential for stronger studies that capture multiple perspectives and thus, reduces the possibility of missing relevant factors.
- This dialogue builds institutional perspective. As staff interact, they come to a common understanding of who we are, how we define the influences affecting our work, and what we value as important in our work.
- Over time, this dialogue promotes meta-analysis across studies to examine the larger institutional picture as relationships among the issues studied.
At its inception, The Center had two components.
The Steering Committee was a small group of staff and faculty who monitored institutional assessment activity. The goal was to avoid redundancy of effort and to encourage participation with The Center where its resources could support new studies. This committee was active for the first two years of The Center's existence. It disbanded in 2001 when The Center developed its direct working relationship with the University's Retention Council.
The Retention Study Team was and continues to be the assessment work group that makes contacts with potential study partners and does the work of data collection, analysis and reporting. As the team identifies new study partners, they work together to identify the issues to be studied, the data to be used, and the techniques appropriate to examination of the data. Work progresses giving attention to the following stages:
Issue(s) identification and Data use: What is to be studied? What data best represent the issues, i.e., what does the data mean and how is it used in this specific context?
Assessment procedures: What methodology and what techniques will be employed? As initial findings are developed, how will we use anecdotal evidence to examine them? As analysis progresses, how will we develop a case for the generalizability of the findings, i.e., are the findings representative of most students or of a specific sub-population?
Reporting process: Who is the audience for the report? Are there multiple audiences? Does the work have potential interest for audiences outside the University community?
Follow up: What additional questions does the work suggest? What relationships to other units within the University does it suggest? Does the work have potential for grant funding or other types of external support?
Presently, the work of The Center continues in partnership with The Center for Support of Teaching and Learning. It makes reports semi-annually to the Retention Council, updating the membership on study findings and programming developments. It receives feedback from the Retention Council, implementing new studies and program initiatives as requested by the Council.
For additional information about The Center, please contact any of The Center staff.
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