Attrition Benchmarks Across Students and School Contexts: Evidence From Student Mobility in Longitudinal Survey Data

• In Event: Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: Division D Section 2 Poster Session 2

Abstract

Student-level longitudinal evaluations of educational practices and interventions often encounter study attrition when students move away from, or drop out of, study schools. This mobility-based attrition can reduce power and introduce bias into an otherwise well-designed study, but the research methodology literature does not include empirical benchmarks to help researchers properly plan for attrition. This paper utilizes four longitudinal surveys to fill this void by reporting benchmarks for the amount of attrition that can arise from natural rates of student mobility. By reporting student mobility rates across different student and school characteristics, as well as different degrees of mobility that correspond to different data collection options, findings from this paper can help researchers plan for normative attrition in longitudinal studies.

Authors

• Jordan Rickles, American Institutes for Research

• Kristina Lillian Zeiser, American Institutes for Research