University attrition: LISREL with logistic regression for the persistence criterion

This study demonstrates the use of logistic regression in conjunction with LISREL for a university attrition study. College records and surveys completed by first-year university students at the beginning of the semester and in the third month of the semester were used to operationalize key constructs within Tinto's attrition model. The sample of 313 students was divided into male and female subgroups for analysis. Significant influential factors within the final empirical models varied between the two groups. LISREL was used to test hypothesized differences between empirical models. Because of the skewed distribution of the final criterion-persistence-logistic regression was used to identify significant predictors.