Identifying Factors That Predict Deaf Students' Academic Success in College. Final Report.

N

233

Special Education Programs (ED/OSERS), Washington, DC.

Academic Achievement; Academic Persistence; Age Differences; College Students; Demography; Dropouts; Grades (Scholastic); Hearing Impairments; Higher Education; Prediction; Racial Factors; Sex Differences

SAT (College Admission Test); Student Descriptive Questionnaire

The study addressed the question of the validity of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and the accompanying Student Descriptive Questionnaire (SDQ) in predicting first year college grades and student persistence through two years of college study for hearing impaired students. Two other sets of predictors, namely, demographic variables such as age, race and sex, and factors specifically related to deafness were also examined. Principal findings included the following: (1) correlations of the predictors with college grades and associated regressions showed that both the SAT and high school grades were good predictors both for the handicapped groups and the control groups; (2) the SAT verbal and mathematics tests, in combination, were found to be unbiased when a sample of deaf candidates was compared with a sample of hearing candidates, both of whom reported scores to the institution in the study where deaf students were mainstreamed with the hearing students; (3) selected questions from the SDQ biographical questionnaire given with the SAT were, as a group, good predictors of college grades for both deaf and hearing samples; (4) the set of demographic predictors that related to deafness characteristics did not significantly forecast college grades for the handicapped; and (5) persistence through 2 years of college study was predicted significantly for two out of three institutions in the study separately, and in combined sample over all schools, when SDQ responses such as high school rank, class size, number of areas in which help was desired in college, participation in extra-curricular activities in high school, and certain academic variables were employed in discriminant analyses to distinguish persisters from non-persisters. (Author/CL)

1986

ED270916