Study habit, skill, and attitude inventories and constructs were found to rival standardized tests and previous grades as predictors of academic performance, yielding substantial incremental validity in predicting academic performance. This meta-analysis (N = 72,431, k = 344) examines the construct validity and predictive validity of 10 study skill constructs for college students. We found that study skill inventories and constructs are largely independent of both high school grades and scores on standardized admissions tests but moderately related to various personality constructs; these results are inconsistent with previous theories. Study motivation and study skills exhibit the strongest relationships with both grade point average and grades in individual classes. Academic specific anxiety was found to be an important negative predictor of performance. In addition, significant variation in the validity of specific inventories is shown. Scores on traditional study habit and attitude inventories are the most predictive of performance, whereas scores on inventories based on the popular depth-of-processing perspective are shown to be least predictive of the examined criteria. Overall, study habit and skill measures improve prediction of academic performance more than any other noncognitive individual difference variable examined to date and should be regarded as the third pillar of academic success.

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Study Habits, Skills, and Attitudes: The Third Pillar Supporting Collegiate Academic Performance

Using both organizational and educational perspectives, the authors proposed and tested theoretical models on the mediating roles that psychosocial factors (PSFs; motivational, emotional, and social control factors) play between college interventions (academic skill, self-management, socialization, and First-Year-Experience interventions) and college outcomes (academic performance and retention). They first determined through meta-analysis of 404 data points the effects of college interventions on college outcomes and on PSFs. These meta-analytic findings were then combined with results from S. B. Robbins et al.'s (2004) meta-analysis to test the proposed models. Integrated meta-analytic path analyses showed the direct and indirect effects (via PSFs) of intervention strategies on both performance and retention outcomes. The authors highlight the importance of both academic skill and self-management-based interventions; they also note the salience of motivational and emotional control mediators across both performance and retention outcomes. Implications from organizational and educational perspectives, limitations, and future directions are addressed.

Intervention effects on college performance and retention as mediated by motivational, emotional, and social control factors: integrated meta-analytic path analyses

This article presents seven guidelines to direct professional practice aimed toward the improvement of institutional student retention rates. For each of the seven guidelines, specific recommendations to provide direction to the enactment of the focal guideline are described. These seven guidelines spring from empirical studies of campus-based interventions and from recommendations for policy and practice advanced in empirical studies of college student retention.

Shaping Retention from Research to Practice.

The primary objective of this article is to examine and synthesize the research literature conducted on the factors that influence African-American students' retention in higher education. Recommendations for future research were discussed. Programmatic implications of this integrative review for higher education personnel and student affairs professionals were also provided.

Retaining African-American Students in Higher Education: An Integrative Review.

In this paper, I examine and explore the continued existence of inferential forms of sexism and racism in higher education. Situated in autoethnography and using complicity theory and narrative analysis, this essay addresses issues and experiences related to civility, sexism and racism on a largely Euro American campus. More specifically, I critically examine the interdependence of sexist and racist ideologies that persist in university classrooms in the guise of civility. I argue that inferential sexism and racism are endemic to U.S. higher education and classrooms and are as dangerous as overt forms of sexism and racism because they are harder to identify, and more naturalized and acceptable.

Helen F. Giles-Gee

Papers

Increasing the Retention of Black Students: A Multimethod Approach.