Explore the basic functionality of the National Student Clearinghouse’s Postsecondary Data Partnership (PDP) Subgroup Gap Analysis. The Subgroup Gap Analysis is an additional report available for most PDP dashboards.
Transcript
This tutorial explores the basic functionality of the National Student Clearinghouse’s Postsecondary Data Partnership Subgroup Gap Analysis. Thank you for joining us.
The Subgroup Gap Analysis is an additional report available for most PDP dashboards. This report helps identify achievement or equity gaps that may exist between student populations.
What do we mean by achievement gap? Let’s say this represents our student cohort, and we want to know if there is a difference in the percentage of students with Pell Grants that met the credit threshold compared to the percentage of students without a Pell Grant who met the credit threshold.
We perform that calculation and find that 19.8% of first-year students with Pell Grants met the credit threshold while 29.1% of first-year students without a Pell Grant met the threshold.
The difference in outcomes is called an achievement gap. In this case, the difference is 9.2 percentage points which is large.
Now let’s use the Postsecondary Data Partnership Subgroup Gap Analysis report to demonstrate how you can find these achievement gaps.
This is the Credit Accumulation Rate dashboard. At the top of the screen, you’ll find four tabs. One of those tabs is called “Subgroup Gap Analysis”.
Clicking on that tab brings us to that report.
First, let’s explore the features.
At the top, we find the same global filters as the main dashboard.
Below the filters, we find the dashboard dimensions and any unique filters that our dashboard had. For the Credit Accumulation Rate dashboard, there are two unique filters: Credit Threshold and Academic Year.
Below the dimensions and unique dashboard filters, we find the reporting section. Unlike the main dashboard, there is only one data visualization. We’ll come back to this in a minute.
Below the data visualization is the same filter breadcrumb that we saw in the main dashboard.
And in the upper right-hand corner, we find a link to download this report into an image file, PDF, or Power Point slide.
Now, let’s turn our attention back to the reporting section. Let’s use this report to answer a question: what is the gap in credit accumulation rate between students who are Pell Grant Recipients and those without a Pell Grant?
To answer that question, let’s apply the Pell Grant Recipient dimension by clicking on the dimension drop down and selecting that metric.
To the right we see the values of the Pell Grant Recipient metric. Because this report compares two student populations, it’s waiting for you to select which populations. Let’s select No (which means that students are not Pell Grant recipients) and Yes (which means students are Pell Grant recipients).
Now, we receive our gap analysis chart. Here, our Pell Grant recipients are indicated by an orange marker while students without a Pell Grant are indicated with a blue marker.
There is a row of markers for each academic year. The top row represents first-year students entering in 2013-14.
The second row represents first-year students entering in 2014-15. And so on.
Looking at the data points, we see the space between the orange and blue marker represents the achievement gap between these two student populations.
Now, let’s look at the results. First, let’s focus 2018-19.
Hovering over the blue marker for 2018-19, we see a tool tip appear. We find that 29.1% of first-year students who are not Pell Grant recipients met the credit threshold.
Hovering over the orange marker, we find that 19.8% of Pell Grant recipients met that threshold.
The gap between these two populations is 9.2 percentage points.
Another interesting finding is that, for most academic years, Pell Grant recipients have a lower credit accumulation rate than students without Pell Grants except for the 2016-17 academic year. Here, the orange marker is to the right of the blue marker. During this academic year, a higher percentage of students with Pell Grants met the credit threshold compared to those without a Pell Grant. It would be interesting to find out why.
A third interesting finding is how the gap has progressively widened from 2016-17 to 2018-19.
Hovering over the orange marker in 2016-17, we find the achievement gap was 1.4 percentage points.
Hovering over the blue marker in 2017-18, we find the achievement gap was 6 percentage points.
And, in 2018-19, the gap was 9.2 percentage points.
And a fourth finding is the overall decline in the credit accumulation rate for both student populations.
How will the achievement gap change if we filter our data to high-academically achieving students? Let’s click on the GPA Range, deselect “All”, click on 3.0 to 3.5, 3.5 to 4.0, and 4.0 to 4.5. Click “Apply”.
You should see that Subgroup Gap Analysis has changed. For academic years 2014-15 through 2017-18, a higher-percent of high-achieving Pell Grant recipients met the credit threshold compared to high-achieving students without a Pell Grant.
We encourage you to explore your institution’s PDP dashboards, especially the Subgroup Gap Analysis report, to better understand achievement and equity gaps among your students. Thank you for joining us.