Success in Community College: Do Institutions Differ?

Community colleges are complex organizations and assessing their performance, though important, is difficult. Compared to 4-year colleges and universities, community colleges serve a more diverse population and provide a wider variety of educational programs that include continuing education and technical training for adults, and diplomas, associates degrees, and transfer credits for recent high school graduates. Focusing solely on the latter programs of North Carolina’s community colleges, we measure the success of each college along two dimensions: attainment of an applied diploma or degree; or completion of the coursework required to transfer to a 4-year college or university. We address three questions. First, how much variation is there across the institutions in these measures of student success? Second, how do these measures of success differ across institutions after we adjust for the characteristics of the enrolled students? Third, how do our measures compare to the measures of success used by the North Carolina Community College System? Although we find variation along both dimensions of success, we also find that part of this variation is attributable to differences in the kinds of students who attend various colleges. Once we correct for such differences, we find that it is not possible to distinguish most of the system’s colleges from one another along either dimension. Top-performing institutions, however, can be distinguished from the most poorly performing ones. Finally, our adjusted rates of success show little correlation either to measurable aspects of the various colleges or to the metrics used by the state.     

Audience Currencies in the Age of Big Data

ABSTRACT

Audience ratings data have long occupied the attention of marketers and media managers. These are the “currencies” that support the operation of commercial media. Today, metrics can be derived from many large datasets, raising the possibility that new kinds of currencies might emerge. We argue that data on exposure are the most likely to support currencies, and that these might well go beyond traditional measures of audience size and composition. We explore the relationship between the most plausible contenders for audience currencies: size and engagement as measured by time spent. Contrary to the “Law of Double Jeopardy,” we find these metrics to be uncorrelated in an online environment, suggesting that each might have a role to play as a currency. We conclude with a discussion of how the political economy of audience measurement is likely to affect audience currencies in the age of big data.     

Full Steam Ahead: A Conceptual Analysis of User-Supplied Tags on Steam

This article describes a conceptual analysis of user-generated tags applied to video games in the Steam video game distribution system. The research team scraped all user-generated tags available on Steam and then conducted a conceptual analysis of the tags, sorting them into categories and comparing them to the current version of the Video Game Metadata Schema. This analysis allowed the team to identify new metadata elements and terms useful to game players. We present a discussion covering the major issues in organizing the terms, as well as the implications for the future work in the area of video game metadata.     

CORRELATES OF PURE AND CO‐OCCURRING PROACTIVE AND REACTIVE AGGRESSORS IN HONG KONG

Research on aggression in the West has focused mainly on the dichotomy between proactive and reactive aggression, but not the co‐occurring proactive–reactive aggression subtype, despite its prevalence. The authors investigated the differences in psychological and behavioral correlates among proactive, reactive, and proactive–reactive student aggressors and nonaggressors in Hong Kong, China, based on their scores on the Reactive and Proactive Aggression Questionnaire. Participants were 1,356 secondary school students (805 males and 551 females, aged 11 to 18 years). A one‐way multivariate analysis of covariance was conducted to examine group differences in aggression, attention deficits, anxiety/depression, and delinquency. Results showed that proactive–reactive aggressors were significantly more aggressive, less attentive, more anxious/depressed, and more engaged in delinquent behaviors. Reactive and proactive aggressors did not differ in three of these four behaviors. Implications for research and practice when working with proactive–reactive aggressors are discussed.