Our Research

PASS (Predictors of Academic Success of Students)

  • Traditional predictors of early academic success in college have shown limited success.  Standardized tests (SAT, ACT) and high school performance (high school GPA and rank) explain about 25% of the variation in first year college GPA.
  • Continuing concerns of gender and racial bias in standardized tests, coupled with the changing demographics of incoming classes (more female and racial minority) create pressure on Admissions and Institutional Research Departments to improve the validity of their selection processes and ultimately student retention and graduation rates.
  • The PASS was developed over six years. The purpose of the PASS is to identify and measure other, non-traditional factors that contribute to the prediction of early academic success.  Based on the business model of “biodata”, past behaviors, motivations, and attitudes were evaluated.  The resulting scoring key, a biographical inventory, correlates uniquely with early academic success.

Student researchers will participate in the following:

  • Conduct literature reviews
  • Collect and clean data
  • Create new items for the PASS
  • Statistically analyze items for validity, fairness, and reliability
  • Disseminate results through papers or presentations

Ethics and Personality Traits

This project draws on the work of Blake Wiley Burlson, who has suggested that MBTI type is related to the way we see and respond to ethical situations.

  • We are interested in seeing how ethical decision making is based in personality traits, with the eventual goal of developing a workshop informed by the findings.
  • Student researchers are involved in this project in the following ways:
    • Literature review
    • Identification of various measures of morality
    • Developing coding schemes
    • Creating and administering pilot studies

Tail Waggin’ Tutors

This is a program that uses therapy-certified dogs to visit elementary schools to improve students’ confidence in reading aloud. We are partnering with West Belmar Elementary School to evaluate the impact that the Tail Waggin’ Tutor Program has had on student reading scores.  During the 2011-2012 school year, West Belmar introduced a program where screened and certified therapy dogs visited K through 5th grade classrooms once a week as part of the reading curriculum. Children read to the dogs in small groups and write stories about the dogs.  Teachers and parents reported increases in reading ability above what would normally be expected developmentally. They also noted improvement in writing, motivation to read, and behavior.  The purpose of this project is to demonstrate empirically these anecdotal findings.

More recently, we have begun evaluating the results in light of a comparison school. We have also looked at our outcome measures: how do reading and writing attitude measures which use a 4-point Likert scale compare to dichotomous items?

Student researchers will:

  • Perform literature review
  • Gather and analyze the archived data
  • Disseminate results through papers or presentations

Animal Assisted Interventions (AAI)

This research investigates the use of animals in therapeutic settings, with a specific focus on the use of animals on college campuses. We are interested in whether Animal Assisted Activities (AAA’s) may be beneficial in alleviating stress levels in college students. AAA’s on college campuses often involve “meet-and-greet” events in which students can interact with dogs or other animals. The project involves evaluating prior research on the effectiveness of AAI, conducting on-campus interviews, as well as researching and developing better methods for evaluating outcomes of AAA’s.

Students get involved by:

  • Performing literature reviews
  • Conducting interviews with relevant administration members at TCNJ
  • Observing AAA’s at TCNJ and elsewhere
  • Developing outcome measures for testing the effectiveness of AAI’s