An Empirical Typology of the Latent Programmatic Structure of Community College Student Success Programs

Abstract

The definition and description of student success programs in the literature (e.g., orientation, firstyear seminars, learning communities, etc.) suggest underlying programmatic similarities. Yet researchers to date typically depend on ambiguous labels to delimit studies, resulting in loosely related but separate research lines and few generalizable findings. To demonstrate whether or how certain programs are effective there is need for more coherent conceptualizations to identify and describe programs. This is particularly problematic for community colleges where success programs are uniquely tailored relative to other sectors. The study's purpose is to derive an empirical typology of community college student success programs based on their curricular and programmatic features. Data come from 1047 success programs at 336 U.S.-based respondents to the Community College Institutional Survey. Because programs might be characterized by their focus in different curricular areas and combinations of foci, we used factor mixture modeling, a hybrid of factor analysis and latent class analysis, which provides a model-based classification method that simultaneously accounts for dimensional and categorical data structures. Descriptive findings revealed extensive commonalities among nominal program types. Inferential analysis revealed five factors (types) of program elements, combined in unique ways among four latent program types: success skills programs, comprehensive programs, collaborative academic programs, and minimalist programs. We illustrate how the typology deconstructs nominal categories, may help unify different bodies of research, and affords a common framework and language for researchers and practitioners to identify and conceptualize programs based on what they do rather than by their names. 72

Content Validation of the Community College Student Success Program Inventory

“…Most directly, low CVI scores indicate questionable validity of the items. However, qualitative data suggested that SMEs may have tended to score items as less relevant due in part to their rarity, which agrees with the relative frequency of course features in national surveys (CCCSE, 2012;Hatch & Bohlig, 2016;Young & Keup, 2016). Because the conceptualization and definitions of these programs are fluid and contested (Hatch, 2016), and because there were double the number of SMEs than in typical content analyses, which arguably led to lower relative acceptable CVI scores in the range of .42 (Lawshe, 1975), we argue that the instrument's content, though not appropriate for a closed-ended survey, is valid for limited purposes.…”

“….you tend to lose the focus on the real important items"). These ratings do reveal the rarity of such features (Hatch & Bohlig, 2016). However, emerging evidence shows that they actually may have much more influence on engagement and meta-cognitive learning than skills-focused curricular items (Hatch, 2017;Hatch, Garcia, Mardock-Uman, Rodriguez, & Young, 2017).…”

“…Tables 3-7 present items reflecting the five factor-based scales of curricular and programmatic elements outlined by Hatch and Bohlig (2016). SMEs overwhelmingly agreed that most of the curricular features of college success skills (Table 3) and academic and student services (Table 4) were relevant or highly relevant aspects, leading to high CVI scores and thus high validity.…”

“…Following the examples of Harris and Wood (2014) and Wood, Reid, Harris, and Xiong (2016), two types of validation scores were calculated: a content validity index (CVI) for each item, and an averaged scale-level index (S-CVI) for five factor-based content areas according to Hatch and Bohlig (2016). CVI measures represent the number of SMEs who rated an item as valid (highly relevant or relevant) divided by all ratings, including invalid ones (somewhat relevant or not relevant).…”

Best Laid Plans: How Community College Student Success Courses Work

“…Among the more prominent practices at community colleges are first-year seminars, college success strategies courses, orientation, and learning communities, among related student success programs (Hatch & Bohlig, 2016). Many studies show that participation in these kinds of interventions is associated with positive outcomes including persistence, academic and social engagement, and higher grades (Bailey & Alfonso, 2005;CCCSE, 2012;Crisp & Taggart, 2013).…”