We Want You Back: Uncovering the Effects on In-Person Instructional Operations in Fall 2020
- 30 November 2021
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Research in Higher Education
- Vol. 63 (5), 741-767
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-021-09665-5
Abstract
Postsecondary institutions’ responses to COVID-19 are a topic of immediate relevance. Emergent research suggests that partisanship was more strongly linked to institutions offering in-person instruction for Fall 2020 than was COVID-19. Using data from the College Crisis Initiative and a multiple group structural equation modeling approach, we tested the relationships between our outcome of interest (in-person instruction in Fall 2020) and state and county sociopolitical features, state and county COVID-19 rates, and state revenue losses. Our full-sample model suggested that County Political Preferences had the strongest association with in-person instruction, followed by Pandemic Severity and State Sociopolitical Features. Because institutional sectors may be uniquely sensitive to these factors, we tested our models separately on 4-year public, 4-year private, and 2-year public and 2-year private institutions. State Sociopolitical Features were significantly related to in-person instruction for 4-year private and 2-year public institutions but were strongest for 4-year public institutions. For 4-year private and 2-year public institutions, County Political Preferences’ effect sizes were 2–3 times stronger than effects from State Sociopolitical Features. Pandemic Severity was significantly, negatively related to in-person instruction for 4-year private and 2-year public institutions–similar in magnitude to State Sociopolitical Features. Our analysis revealed that COVID-19 played a stronger role in determining in-person instruction in Fall 2020 than initial research using less sophisticated methods suggested—and while State Sociopolitical Features may have played a role in the decision, 4-year private and 2-year public institutions were more sensitive to county-level preferences.Keywords
This publication has 63 references indexed in Scilit:
- Affect, Not IdeologyPublic Opinion Quarterly, 2012
- Community College Governance, Funding, and Accountability: A Century of Issues and TrendsCommunity College Journal of Research and Practice, 2009
- Sensitivity of Goodness of Fit Indexes to Lack of Measurement InvarianceStructural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 2007
- Party Control of State Government and the Distribution of Public Expenditures*The Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 2006
- The Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS): Normative data and latent structure in a large non‐clinical sampleBritish Journal of Clinical Psychology, 2003
- Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternativesStructural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 1999
- Fit indices in covariance structure modeling: Sensitivity to underparameterized model misspecification.Psychological Methods, 1998
- State Policies Affecting Cities and Counties in 1992Public Budgeting & Finance, 1993
- The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational FieldsAmerican Sociological Review, 1983
- Social categorization and similarity in intergroup behaviourEuropean Journal of Social Psychology, 1973