Studying progress: An event history analysis

Jubilee Fund of the City of Vienna for the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration

The statistical analysis of completion and dropout rates of students is the main topic of our project. Data of students and their studying progress for two cohorts of entrants to the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration (Wirtschaftsuniversität) are the basis of the analysis. The data come partly from administrative data bases of the university, e.g., personal characteristics like age, sex, and school qualification, and data that describe the studying progress like examination grades. Other data come from interviews of the students, e.g., on money earning activities beside and additional education. The aim of the project is to estimate predictive models to

• find factors which can explain completion and dropout rates

• explore dependencies of completion and dropout rates in relation to studying progress

• predict the mean duration and the probability of dropout for different sets of social characteristics.

The statistical analysis is based on a class of statistical methods called event history analysis. In addition we analyze cohorts of graduates with descriptive methods.