Examining Study Attrition: Implications for Experimental Research on Professional Development

Published: 
Apr. 02, 2012

This article was published in Teaching and Teacher Education, Vol 28 number 3,
Author(s): Beth W. Kubitskey, Richard J. Vath, Heather J. Johnson, Barry J. Fishman, Spyros Konstantopoulos, and Gina J. Park, " Examining Study Attrition: Implications for Experimental Research on Professional Development", Pages 418–427, Copyright Elsevier (April 2012)

Teacher attrition threatens validity in research studies.
In this article, the authors examine the threat of participant attrition as an example of the types of problems researchers face.

Findings revealed that counter-intuitively, higher levels of recruitment effort were related to higher dropout rates among teachers.
The authors also found that teachers left because of changes in teaching assignments, institutional challenges, and personal challenges.

Finally, the majority of teachers in urban schools dropped out, while the majority of teachers in rural or suburban schools remained.

Updated: Sep. 27, 2012
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