affect of admissions on rush

[TechTransfer]

Male enrollment and total enrollment was steady, so that's not it.

I can't control for socioeconomic factors, because that data isn't collected (except by financial aid, and I doubt I can get my hands on it). I can see that this could be caused if there was a sudden decline in the average student's wealth- poorer students can't afford to be Greek. I'm going to have to account for that.

It isn't geographic region of students- I've got those numbers, and they don't change over that period, so it's not like we were getting significantly more out of staters.

I'm trying to think of other things that could affect student body composition in a way that would cause this. We didn't get any new dorms. It's possible there was new apartment construction, which might reduce Greek involvement, that's easy to check. No new academic programs. We changed from Div II to I-A in football, but I'm not what affect, if any, that would have on this.

Please don't think I'm upset you're poking holes- I appreciate it, because it's what the people who read my article are going to do as well. Every theory needs a devil's advocate.

[DSTCHAOS]

Originally Posted by TechTransfer

Please don't think I'm upset you're poking holes- I appreciate it, because it's what the people who read my article are going to do as well. Every theory needs a devil's advocate.

This isn't a devil's advocate kind of discussion. It is an academic one.

You have to always control for various factors before you assume causation (especially as distinct from correlation). For instance, if you were submitting your article to a refereed journal, the reviewers will ask "how do you know this" and "what have you controlled for?" If you do not control for anything else, they will tell you that your quantitative methods are elementary school-level and similar to doing crosstabs.

You aren't the first person to do this type of research. I suggest searching your university's library webpage and so forth. If this is more than an undergrad course paper, there is other data that's accessible even if it's not through your university.