Socio-demographic Characteristics of Student Success: Predictors of Success in a Predominantly Online Degree Program

The central issue explored in this project was whether race/ethnicity, gender, and age have an impact on success in a predominantly online degree program. A dataset consisted of the cohort of participants in the BGS program at TWU as of Fall 2004. Analysis was divided into elaboration analyses and binary logistic regression. No statistically significant results were found. All results indicated that failure to reject the null hypothesis was the correct choice for both hypotheses. There were indications and suggestions that there was a relationship between some of the chosen predictor variables, but conclusive results could not be drawn using the dataset available for this study. However, varying relationships between the predictor variables and the dependent variable, success, were noted. The recurring issues that interfered with finding conclusive results were the size and quality of the dataset. However, analyses revealed indications that should be followed in future research.