ABSTRACT LYNCH, LIAN. Repeated Test Taking on the SAT: The Effects of Ethnicity, Gender, Financial Aid, and High School Location. (Under the direction of Kevin P. Brady, Ph.D. & Shevaun D. Neupert, Ph.D.) The purpose of this study was to determine whether there was a significant relationship between repeated test taking on the SAT and several demographic measures. These measures included ethnicity (American Indian/Alaskan Native, Asian/Asian American/Pacific Islander, Black/African American, Mexican/Mexican American, Puerto Rican, Other Hispanic/Latino/Latin American, White, Other, and Unreported); gender (male, female, unreported); need for financial aid (yes, no, unknown, unreported); or high school location (large city, medium-sized city, small city or town, suburban, rural, and unreported) for North Carolina State University applicants between 2003 and 2008. An additional goal was to investigate the implications the new SAT reporting option, Score Choice, could have on future applicants’ scores. The study examined SAT scores submitted to North Carolina State University between 2003 and 2008 for its applicants, totaling 151,901 individual SAT scores. Overall, this study found there was a significant statistical relationship between repeatedly taking the SAT and ethnicity, gender, need for financial aid, and high school location. Furthermore, it found that the new SAT reporting policy, Score Choice, could indeed impact North Carolina State University undergraduate applicants’ scores. On average, there was a within-person change in student SAT scores over time when looking at the North Carolina State University applicant pool between 2003 and 2008. Additionally, there was not a disadvantage to taking the SAT multiple times, as on average scores did not decrease across the selected population. This indicated that the more times students took the SAT, the greater the potential to increase their score. The findings also indicated that there were differences in whether students’ scores increased with each additional attempt of the SAT based on ethnic background, gender, and need for financial aid. The SAT score that students would report through Score Choice was found to be related to ethnicity, gender, financial aid, and location of a student’s high school. A paired samples t test revealed a statistically reliable difference between the score a student reports using Score Choice (the highest combination of math and verbal scores during one sitting) and the combination of an applicant’s highest scores from each portion of the SAT to obtain the highest possible final SAT score (“superscore”). Therefore, it appears that the practice of taking the highest math and highest verbal score across all sittings of the SAT is the more beneficial to a student than the score submitted by Score Choice. © Copyright 2012 by Lian Lynch All Rights Reserved Repeated Test Taking on the SAT: The Effects of Ethnicity, Gender, Financial Aid, and High School Location by Lian Lynch A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of North Carolina State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Educational Research and Policy Analysis Raleigh, North Carolina 2012 APPROVED BY: _______________________________ ______________________________ Kevin P. Brady, Ph.D. Shevaun D. Neupert, Ph.D. Committee Co-Chair Committee Co-Chair ________________________________ ________________________________ Robert C. Serow, Ph.D. Louis D. Hunt, Ph.D. BIOGRAPHY Lian Lynch (nee Oxenham) is originally from Leeds, England, and is the youngest child of Olwyn and William Oxenham. When Lian was 12 years old, her family immigrated to North Carolina, where she has lived ever since. After graduating from East Carolina University with a Bachelors of Science in Business Administration (2002) and MBA (2003), she worked in the department of Registration and Records at North Carolina State University for five years. In 2009, she started working in the Graduate School at North Carolina State University. Lian married Michael Lynch of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 2006. They currently reside in Holly Springs, North Carolina, with their daughter Emerson Kate. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................ vii LIST OF FIGURES ......................................................................................................... viii Chapter 1: Introduction ........................................................................................................1 Background of Study ........................................................................................................1 Statement of Problem ........................................................................................................2 Purpose of Study ...............................................................................................................4 Significance of Study ........................................................................................................4 Definition of Terms...........................................................................................................5 Research Questions ...........................................................................................................6 Limitations of the Study....................................................................................................7 Assumptions ......................................................................................................................9 Organization of Study .......................................................................................................9 Chapter 2: Literature Review .............................................................................................10 Introduction .....................................................................................................................10 High Stakes Testing ........................................................................................................11 The Role of the SAT .......................................................................................................20 Score Choice ...................................................................................................................23 Post Secondary Admissions and Land Grant Universities .............................................26 The Relationship between Score Choice and North Carolina State University ..............31 Student Demographic Variables .....................................................................................31 Ethnicity ........................................................................................................................32 iii Gender ...........................................................................................................................36 Socioeconomic status ....................................................................................................39 High school attended.....................................................................................................42 Summary .........................................................................................................................43 Chapter 3: Methodology ....................................................................................................44 Introduction .....................................................................................................................44 Setting .............................................................................................................................45 Participants ......................................................................................................................46 Instrumentation ...............................................................................................................48 Level 1 Variable (Within-Student) .................................................................................50 Time ..............................................................................................................................50 Quadratic time ...............................................................................................................50 Level 2 Variables (Between-Student) .............................................................................50 Ethnicity ........................................................................................................................50 Gender ...........................................................................................................................52 Financial aid ..................................................................................................................55 High school location .....................................................................................................56 Dependent Variables .......................................................................................................57 Data Collection ...............................................................................................................57 Data Analysis ..................................................................................................................57 Summary .........................................................................................................................63 Chapter 4: Results