Education Commons^™

Who Stays And Who Leaves? Predicting College Student Persistence Using Comprehensive Retention Models, Adam C. Elder

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to use a comprehensive framework to examine academic, psychosocial, noncognitive, and other background factors that are related to retention at a large, public four-year institution in the southeastern United States. Specifically, the study examined what factors are most important in predicting first-to-second year retention both before the student enrolls at the university and after completion of their first semester of coursework. Data were drawn from institutional records, a survey instrument designed to measure psychosocial constructs, the ACT student record, and the National Center for Education Statistics. The sample for the study consisted of 12,342 …