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Publications [#40039] of Jeffrey C Valentine

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Peer-reviewed journal articles under review

  1. Valentine, J. C., & McHugh, C. "The effects of attrition on baseline comparability in randomized experiments in education: A meta-analysis." Psychological Methods (2005). (invited resubmission)
    (last updated on 2005/10/13)

    Abstract:
    Using meta-analysis, randomized experiments in education that either clearly did or clearly did not experience attrition were examined for the baseline comparability of groups. Results from 34 studies suggested that the observed measures of baseline comparability did not differ more than would be expected given sampling error. There was no relation between either the overall or the differential attrition rates and baseline comparability, a finding which held up under sensitivity analyses. In addition, although post-test effect sizes were statistically significantly related to the baseline (pretest) effect sizes, we demonstrate a simple adjustment to the post- test effect size that may result in a better estimator of the effect size in the population. Our results suggest caution is warranted when applying blanket rules pertaining to attrition that are meant to either serve as inclusion/exclusion criteria or in scoring study quality. Greater attention is needed to both the reporting of attrition in primary studies and to the synthesis of contextual influences on attrition rates across domains.