Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
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Item Predictors of Bachelor's Degree Completion and the Returns to College Student Employment: An Application of Propensity Score Matching(2014) Medellin, Richard Jay; Titus, Marvin A.; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Drawing from Bean's (1990) student attrition model and human capital theory (Becker, 1993; Mincer, 1974), this study examined the relationships between college student employment, bachelor's degree completion, and post-college salary outcomes. Using NCES Beginning Postsecondary Student Longitudinal Study (BPS:04/09) data, the investigation was conducted in separate analytic phases involving logistic regression, propensity score matching, and fixed-effects regression techniques. The application of propensity score matching addressed the selection bias present in prior studies to refine the current understanding of the returns to college student employment. The phase one results indicate many variables included in the analysis were associated with degree completion; most notably among them are the distance students live from campus, students' level of college engagement, their college academic performance, and work activities during college. The results suggest that living on-campus, active engagement in clubs, study groups, and interaction with faculty are positively associated with degree completion. The results also indicate that working during college, up to 20 hours per week, is positively related to degree completion. Conversely, working in excess of 30 hours per week is negatively associated with completing a college degree. The phase two results indicate several variables were associated with college students' future salaries, and include students' work activities during college, their institution's admissions selectivity, college degree major, and the relationship student's degree major has with their post-college job. The results indicate that working in excess of 30 hours per week while in college is positively associated with students' future earnings. The results also indicate that attending institutions with higher levels of admissions selectivity is positively related with post-college earnings. Student degree major and the relationship of students' college majors to their future jobs were also positively related to their post-college salary. The results reveal college students' participation in higher education and their work activities are not entirely antithetical. This study illustrates that under certain conditions, working during college may be supportive of students' educational pursuits and financially beneficial to students' post-college careers. This conclusion has important implications for academic advising and college career center practices and improves our knowledge pertaining to the working college student.Item TURNING POINTS IN LATE ADOLESCENCE: A STUDY OF HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION AND ADULT OFFENDING IN A LIFE COURSE FRAMEWORK(2010) Liu, Weiwei; Petras, Hanno; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Guided by the general theoretical paradigm of life course criminology, this study investigates the relationship between high school graduation and adult offending. This dissertation builds upon the idea of turning points in reducing offending behavior and extends this idea from adulthood to late adolescence/early adulthood, and considers high school graduation as a turning point in reducing adult offending behavior. This dissertation identifies the research gap on the high school graduation/dropout-delinquency relationship, that is, most previous studies could not reject the alternative hypothesis, i.e. not graduating from high school and adult offending can both be explained by prior processes. This dissertation investigates the causal relationship between high school graduation, as a turning point that opens up future opportunities, and early adult offending. After establishing a causal relationship between graduation and adult offending, this study further explores the mechanisms of the graduation effect. In particular, this study investigates whether and to what extent turning points in adulthood, i.e. employment and intimate relationships, mediate such a causal relationship. The sample used in this dissertation consists of 460 males from the data collected by Johns Hopkins Prevention Intervention Research Center (JHU PIRC). The analytical methods used in this study include propensity score matching, sensitivity analysis (to address selection bias due to possible omitted covariates), and mediation analysis. In terms of the causal relationship between graduation and offending, it was found that high school graduates are 93% less likely to have an adult offending record than dropouts similar on early processes. Such a finding is robust to selection bias due to possible omitted covariates. It was concluded that for those who are at great risk for dropping out, staying in school and finishing their education provides a turning point in reducing adult offending. In terms of the mechanisms of the graduation effect, it was found that post graduation experiences, employment in particular, help explain the graduate-dropout differences in offending during early adulthood. For dropouts, employment may be another turning point. Implications for life course criminology and policy are discussed.Item Causal Inference with Group-Based Trajectories and Propensity Score Matching: Is High School Dropout a Turning Point?(2006-04-28) Sweeten, Gary Allen; Bushway, Shawn D; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Life course criminology focuses on trajectories of deviant or criminal behavior punctuated by turning point events that redirect trajectories onto a different path. There is no consensus in the field on how to measure turning points. In this study I ask: Is high school dropout a turning point in offending trajectories? I utilize two kinds of matching methods to answer this question: matching based on semi-parametric group-based trajectory models, and propensity score matching. These methods are ideally suited to measure turning points because they explicitly model counterfactual outcomes which can be used to estimate the effect of turning point events over time. It has been suggested that dropout is the end result of a process of disengagement from school. In order to assess the effect of the event of dropout, it is necessary to separate dropout from the processes that lead to it. The extent to which this is accomplished by matching is assessed by comparing dropouts to matched non-dropouts on numerous background characteristics. As such, it is desirable to use a wide range of measures to compare the two groups. I use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to address this question. Delinquency is measured in two ways: a six-item variety scale and a scale based on a graded-response model. Dropout is based on self-reports of educational attainment supplemented with official transcripts provided by high schools. Because of the breadth of topics covered in this survey, it is very well-suited to matching methods. The richness of these data allows comparisons on over 300 characteristics to assess whether the assumptions of matching methods are plausible. I find that matching based on trajectory models is unable to achieve balance in pre-dropout characteristics between dropouts and non-dropouts. Propensity score matching successfully achieves balance, but dropout effects are indistinguishable from zero. I conclude that first-time dropout between the ages of 16 and 18 is not a turning point in offending trajectories. Implications for life course criminology and dropout research are discussed.