This longitudinal study examined factors that contribute to the persistence of underrepresented racial minority (URM) undergraduates in STEM fields. The primary source of data came from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program's 2004 The Freshman Survey (TFS) and 2008 College Senior Survey (CSS). The sample included 3,670 students at 217 institutions who indicated on the TFS that they intended to major in a STEM field, 1,634 of whom were underrepresented minority (URM) students. Findings indicate that Black and Latino undergraduates were significantly less likely to persist in STEM majors than were their White and Asian American counterparts. Background characteristics and college experiences moderated this race effect, suggesting both that pre-college factors may explain some of the observed racial disparities and that individual institutions can take more concrete actions to improve science achievement. Findings from the follow-up analysis of the sample of URMs suggest that institutions can improve URM STEM persistence by increasing the likelihood that those students will engage in key academic experiences: studying frequently with others, participating in undergraduate research, and involvement in academic clubs or organizations. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 51: 555–580, 2014

Item Response Theory (IRT) is a measurement theory that is ideal for scale and test development in institutional research, but it is not without its drawbacks. This chapter provides an overview of IRT, describes an example of its use, and highlights the pros and cons of using IRT in applied settings.

Despite the many benefits of involving undergraduates in research and the growing number of undergraduate research programs, few scholars have investigated the factors that affect faculty members' decisions to involve undergraduates in their research projects. We investigated the individual factors and institutional contexts that predict faculty members' likelihood of engaging undergraduates in their research project(s). Using data from the Higher Education Research Institute's 2007-2008 Faculty Survey, we employ hierarchical generalized linear modeling to analyze data from 4,832 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) faculty across 194 institutions to examine how organizational citizenship behavior theory and social exchange theory relate to mentoring students in research. Key findings show that faculty who work in the life sciences and those who receive government funding for their research are more likely to involve undergraduates in their research project(s). In addition, faculty at liberal arts or historically Black colleges are significantly more likely to involve undergraduate students in research. Implications for advancing undergraduate research opportunities are discussed.

This study compares the psychometric utility of Classical Test Theory (CTT) and Item Response Theory (IRT) for scale construction with data from higher education student surveys. Using 2008 Your First College Year (YFCY) survey data from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, two scales are built and tested-one measuring social involvement and one measuring academic involvement. Findings indicate that although both CTT and IRT can be used to obtain the same information about the extent to which scale items tap into the latent trait being measured, the two measurement theories provide very different pictures of scale precision. On the whole, IRT provides much richer information about measurement precision as well as a clearer roadmap for scale improvement. The findings support the use of IRT for scale construction and survey development in higher education.

Supporting quality data and decisions for higher education. In an age in which information and data are more readily available than ever, it is critical for higher education institutions to develop tools that can communicate essential information to those who make decisions in an easy-to-understand format. One of the tools available for this purpose is a dashboard, a one-to two-page document that presents critical information (indicators) in a succinct, visually appealing format. Just as an automobile dashboard with it its speedometer, odometer, tachometer, fuel gauge, temperature gauge, engine warning, and myriad other indicators, is designed to help the driver navigate the highway, an institutional dashboard is a tool designed to help management guide an organization. Or, as Doerfel and Ruben (2002) put it, a dashboard can be seen as a set of indicators that " reflect key elements of [an organization's] mission, vision, and strategic direction…[that can be used] to monitor and navigate the organization in much the same way a pilot and flight crew use the array of indicators in the cockpit to monitor and navigate an airplane " (p. 18). Regardless of the analogy employed, at a basic level a college or university's institutional dashboard is a management tool that succinctly informs its viewers of the current state of affairs, provides information with which the