An Analysis of College Choice Information Provided on Graduate Program Websites: Implications for Improving Applicant Diversity in Educational Measurement

Joseph A. Rios; Jennifer Randall; Marina Donnelly

doi:10.1111/emip.12284

An Analysis of College Choice Information Provided on Graduate Program Websites: Implications for Improving Applicant Diversity in Educational Measurement

Joseph A. Rios, Jennifer Randall, Marina Donnelly

Educational Psychology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

9 Scopus citations

Abstract

There has long been a concern about the lack of representation of ethnic minorities in the field of educational measurement. As previous research has shown that graduate programs primarily rely on their websites for recruiting efforts, the objective of this study was to conduct a content analysis of all U.S. educational measurement program websites to evaluate the availability of college choice information found to be useful for underrepresented ethnic minority applicants. In terms of program climate, results revealed that less than 10% of programs directly encouraged ethnic minorities to apply or included an antidiscrimination statement with regard to application review on their websites. Moreover, only a few program websites indicated the availability of flexible programming—previously found to be important for underrepresented ethnic minority students—such as part-time options (16%), evening courses (10%), and online course/program availability (8%). Recommendations for how measurement programs can improve their websites to include desirable college choice information for underrepresented ethnic minority applicants are discussed.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	67-77
Number of pages	11
Journal	Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice
Volume	38
Issue number	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1111/emip.12284
State	Published - Dec 1 2019

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank Lauren R. Erickson from the University of Massachusetts Amherst for her assistance with coding. The first author conceived of the presented idea. The first and second authors designed the coding scheme, and the third author performed the data extraction and ran frequencies under the supervision of authors one and two. The first two authors wrote the majority of the manuscript and managed critical revisions throughout the review process. Final approval of the version to be published was made by all authors.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 by the National Council on Measurement in Education

Keywords

diversity
educational measurement
graduate admissions
psychometrics
underrepresented ethnic minorities

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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An Analysis of College Choice Information Provided on Graduate Program Websites: Implications for Improving Applicant Diversity in Educational Measurement

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

UN SDGs

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