Answering critical questions using quantitative data

Abstract

With this volume we seek to demonstrate the ways that we as scholars turn our quantitative skills toward asking and answering critical questions in higher education research. We examine a variety of higher education issues from a critical stance, using quantitative methods. Collectively, our work demonstrates ways of moving beyond traditional conceptualizations of quantitative research. We use our scholarship to push the boundaries of what we know by questioning mainstream notions of higher education through the examination of policies, the reframing of theories and measures, and the reexamination of traditional questions for nontraditional populations. Although the work presented here is divergent, the commonality of the presentations lies in each scholar's critical approach to conventional quantitative scholarship.In the following chapters the authors focus on research questions rather than methods or findings. They describe the ways conventional research drove them to the questions of their studies, and then tell how those results challenged the status quo. Because the perspective of this volume is on the framing of the research questions, methods and results are secondary and are presented only to illustrate various applications of critical quantitative inquiry. We hope to demonstrate that being a quantitative criticalist comes with the questions we ask, not with the methods we use to answer them.In this chapter, I invoke various scholars' definitions of critical inquiry, and relying primarily on Kincheloe and McLaren (1994)

Early experiences and integration in the persistence of first‐generation college students in STEM and non‐STEM majors

“…In this study, the authors take a quantitative criticalist approach (Stage, ; Stage & Wells, ) to explain persistence in different majors—PEMC‐STEM, other‐STEM, and non‐STEM—among FGCSs at one urban research university. The purpose of this quantitative case study is to understand how well different pre‐college factors and early college experiences explain persistence among students based on major at an institution with significant proportions of FGCSs and transfer students among its entering student population.…”

“…“As we analyze data in large mixed groups, we learn about the majority but little about those on the margins” (Stage, , p. 96). Following our intent to more equitably describe the educational experiences of FGCSs in STEM, we consider dominant models of college student persistence (e.g., Tinto, ), yet focus solely on FGCSs as the target population in the study, rather than FGC status as one variable in persistence.…”

The Interaction of Principal and Teacher Instructional Influence as a Measure of Leadership as an Organizational Quality

“…This second research question represents an important step in demonstrating that the OLM reliably distinguishes between the school leadership contexts it is constructed to represent and that the quality of school leadership varies in consistent ways as a function of non-malleable school demographic characteristics. In undertaking this distinctly critical purpose, the study is informed by quantitative critical inquiry (Stage, 2007) in harnessing the broad, generalizable findings of quantitative inquiry to interrogate the relationship between social and institutional structures and educational inequality. In doing so, this study adds to the persistently disturbing finding that schools serving high-need populations are characterized by conditions of ineffective school leadership and a function, not of any inherent quality of the communities or students those schools serve, but rather of a system that reinforces structural inequality through conditions that perpetuate high teacher and principal turnover and low expectations for students and staff alike.…”

Examining the Cultural Validity of a College Student Engagement Survey for Latinos

“…Third, the choice to conduct institution-specific analysis may be considered a limitation because the sample size does not afford conducting a confirmatory factor analysis. Nonetheless, conducting an institution-specific analysis is consistent with scholars' (LaNasa et al, 2009;Stage, 2007) call for reconceptualizing student engagement wherein an institution's unique cultural environment, its efforts toward inclusion, and diverse ways of fostering students' interactional relationships and behavioral involvements both within and outside the classroom engagement is paramount. It is essential for institutions to examine their own data to understand how engagement manifests at their own campuses (Kuh, 2009;LaNasa et al, 2009)-the relative composition of diverse students and its associated campus climate and diversity (Chatman, 2008;Denson & Chang, 2009;Nuñez, 2009) may both play a critical role in how Latino students' engage, their sense of belonging, and their perceptions of the campus climate.…”