Many researchers have explored the relationships between the likelihood of graduating from college and demographic and pre-college factors such as gender, race/ethnicity, high school grade point average (GPA), and standardized test scores. However, additional factors such as a student's college major, home address, or use of learning support in college have been examined to a far lesser degree. This study seeks to add these factors to an integrative persistence model in order to examine their impact on predicting college graduation in a six-year timeframe. Results indicate that students with in-state home addresses are more likely to graduate within six years than students with out-of-state home addresses, when controlling for other factors. Findings also suggest that graduation rates vary considerably for different majors and for those using learning support such as tutoring and Supplemental Instruction in college. Therefore, these additional factors become important for institutions to consider, particularly as it applies to implementing new programs, expanding programs proven effective, and/or targeting specific populations of students in order to help them persist to timely college graduation.

Research frequently uses quantitative approach to explore undergraduates’ statistics anxiety conditions. However, few studies of adults’ statistics anxiety use qualitative method or focus solely on graduate students. Moreover, even less studies focus on comparing adults’ anxiety levels before and after the introductory statistics course. This line of study is important to pursue since the introductory statistics course should play the very important roles of both preparing students’ the foundation knowledge of higher level statistics course, and inspiring students’ interests for higher level course. In addition, graduate students tend to have different backgrounds, learning motivations, and learning habits compared to their undergraduate counterparts. Overall, limited mixed research method is available on social sciences graduate students’ (1) statistics anxiety before and after the introductory statistics course and (2) actions taken to decrease the anxiety. This study seeks to fill this gap by incorporating a mixed research method to explore social sciences graduate students’ statistics learning processes. Findings suggest that the social sciences graduate students’ anxiety levels diminished after the introductory statistics course, even though they also experienced severe statistics anxiety at the very beginning. These findings became essential for institutions, higher education instructors, and social sciences statistics learners to consider.

The past decades have brought many changes to education, including the role of social media in education. Social media data offer educational researchers first-hand insights into educational processes. This is different from most traditional and often obtrusive data collection methods (e.g., interviews and surveys). Many researchers have explored the role of social media in education, such as the value of social media in the classroom, the relationship between academic achievement and social media. However, the role of social media in educational research, including data collection and analysis from social media, has been examined to a far lesser degree. This study seeks to discuss the potential of social media for educational research. The purpose of this chapter is to illustrate the process of collecting and analyzing social media data through a pilot study of current math educational conditions.

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