Part 1 of a case study in three parts, illustrating how we work with longitudinal student-level records.
Goals. Introducing the study.
Data. Transforming the data to yield the observations of interest.
Results. Summary statistics, metric, chart, and table.
Definitions
- student-level data
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Data at the “student-level” refers to information about individual students including, for example, demographics, programs, academic standing, courses, grades, and degrees. Also called Student Unit Records (SURs).
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MIDFIELD student-level data are provided in four data tables (
student,course,term, anddegree) that were compiled by institutions and anonymized and curated by the MIDFIELD data steward. - stickiness
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Program “stickiness” $\small\left(S\right)$ is the ratio of the number of graduates of a program $\small\left(N_g\right)$ to the number ever enrolled in the program $\small\left(N_e\right)$.
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$$ \small S = \frac{N_g}{N_e} = \frac{\mathrm{number\ of\ graduates\ of\ a\ program}}{\mathrm{number\ ever\ enrolled\ in\ the\ program}} $$
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Stickiness is a more-inclusive alternative to graduation rate as a measure of a program’s success in attracting, keeping, and graduating their undergraduates. Stickiness includes many students excluded by graduation rate such as part-time students, transfers, students admitted in any term, and migrators (Ohland et al. 2012).
Goals
- Task
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Compute and compare the stickiness of Civil, Electrical, Industrial, and Mechanical Engineering programs with students grouped by race/ethnicity and sex.
- Purpose
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The case study illustrates how we work with student-level data. Starting with the curated data and concluding with a chart of the metric, we focus throughout on our process and the underlying rationale.
- Constraint
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While we provide all the necessary code, we limit our discussion of the code (functions, arguments, syntax, etc.) to meet the constraint of providing a brief, yet complete, case study. Such discussions are left to later articles. One can always use the R help system to read more about a data set or function.