Page 41 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

Chapter 2
In this chapter we will describe the samples, procedures, instruments, and analyses that were used in the four empirical studies that are presented in Chapters 4 to 7.
2.1 Participants and procedures
2.1.1 Students
Table 2.1 presents the sample characteristics of the four studies and Figure 2.1 shows the timeline of the data collection. e data for Chapters 4 and 5 were collected in secondary schools. Chapter 4 was intended as a pilot study for the large-scale secondary school data collection of Chapter 5. Participants were grade 10 and 11 students from ve schools in the north of the Netherlands. ese data were collected in June 2013. However, the instruments tested in this pilot proved to be of su cient quality for statistical analyses, which is why these pilot data could be used for Chapter 4. A er re ning the instruments based on the Chapter 4 pilot data results, we collected data on a larger scale from November 2014 to February 2015, at 15 schools all over the Netherlands in grades 10, 11, and 12. e total number of participants was 2,261, but for Chapter 5 we only used the data from grade 12 students (n = 669, from N = 11 schools). e procedures of the pilot study and the large-scale study were comparable: Students completed paper- and-pencil questionnaires in a classroom, a er having received instruction from either the researcher or a teacher who was instructed by the researcher.
At the end of the secondary school questionnaires for Chapter 5, we asked the participating grade 12 students if they were willing to provide us with their e-mail address so that we could contact them a year later for a follow-up study. In total, 90 students who participated in the data collection for Chapter 5 also completed an online questionnaire one year later when they were studying at a university. For these students we could then analyse how certain characteristics measured in secondary school were related to success in university a year later. ese analyses were part of Chapter 5.
Next to the data from these 90 rst-year university students we also collected data at our own university in three degree programmes: human geography and urban and regional planning, law, and sociology. ese students completed the same online questionnaire as the students who we managed to follow from grade 12 to university. is resulted in a sample of 243 rst-year university students that was used for Chapter 7. Data collection for Chapter 7 took place from December
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