Analytic Plan

My early graduate segmentation process results in a much stronger base of early graduate groups that I can assess across several phases of analysis. I will now review the intent of all four of the forthcoming analytic chapters in this study. A brief outline the key hypotheses of each chapter is presented below and more detailed discussions (including ingoing expectations based on relevant prior literature) will follow in each respective analytic chapter.

represent the first known reporting of demographic differences (e.g., sex, race, parents, region and neighborhood) between different groups of early graduates. I will be using means compari- sons to determine if significant demographic differences exist between different early graduate groups. The hypotheses that I will be exploring in Chapter 4 are:

Hypothesis 4.1: White and Asian students comprise a smaller percentage of easy way outs compared to other races.

Hypothesis 4.2: White and Asian students comprise a higher percentage of earnest achievers compared to other races.

Hypothesis 4.3: Earnest achievers will have the highest percentage of two parent households compared to the other early graduate groups

Hypothesis 4.4: Early escapees will have the highest percentage of urban students compared to the other early graduate groups.

Hypothesis 4.5: Earnest achievers will have the highest percentage of suburban students com- pared to the other early graduate groups.

The second analytic phase of my study, presented in Chapter 5, addresses the question of “how do levels of academic and social engagement levels compare across the different types of early graduate groups?” I am seeking to understand how different groups of early graduates compare with each other as well as with on time graduates and dropouts in terms of academic and social engagement levels. This analysis utilizes chi-square tests of significance to determine if there are significant differences in the levels of academic and social engagement between the groups. If significant differences are found, I will further investigate the findings through a nest- ed logistical regression approach to determine if these differences remain significant after con- trolling for other theorized factors. I will be focusing this analysis on the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 5.1: Early graduates are not different than on time graduates in terms of academic engagement but are more academically engaged than dropouts.

Hypothesis 5.2: Early graduates with a diploma are similar to dropouts but lower than on time graduates in their levels of social engemgent.

Hypothesis 5.3: Earnest achievers will be the most academically engaged among the early graduate groups.

Hypothesis 5.4: Easy way outs will be the least academically engaged early graduate group.

Hypothesis 5.5: Early escapees have less social engagement compared to earnest achievers, underachieving passives and mediocre passives.

The third analytic section, presented in Chapter 6, addresses the question of “do levels of academic and social engagement explain why some students seek an early graduation?” This third analytic chapter is designed to determine if levels of academic and social engagement really matter in terms of explaining why different groups of early graduates seek an early graduation pathway. I will be creating a series of nested multinomial logistical regression models that treat the different types of high school exiter groups (e.g., easy way outs, early escapees, earnest achievers, underachieving passives, mediocre passives, on time) as dependent variables in differ- ent iterations of the models. Dropouts are excluded from this section by design because my fo- cus is on comparisons between different types of early graduates and on time graduates (the normative group from which the early graduates are deviating from). This analytic strategy will allow me to determine if academic and social engagement levels are significant, even after con- trolling for other important theory-based variables that might help to explain the influencers of early high school graduation. My ingoing hypotheses for this chapter are:

Hypothesis 6.1: On time graduates have higher levels of academic and social engagement compared to early graduates.

Hypothesis 6.2: Easy way outs have lower levels of academic and social engagement com- pared to the other early graduate groups and on time graduates.

Hypothesis 6. 3: Early escapes have lower levels of social engagement compared to the other exiter groups.

Hypothesis 6.4: Earnest achievers will have higher levels of academic engagement but lower levels of social engagement compared to all of the other exiter groups.

Hypothesis 6.5: Neither underachieving passives nor mediocre passives will have higher aca- demic or social engagement compared to the other exiter groups.

Chapter 7 is the final analytic chapter and addresses the question of “are there differences in the initial post-high school outcomes among the early graduate groups?” This chapter de- scribes the patterns of educational, occupational and family trajectories across the different early graduate groups based on information gathered in the second ELS follow-up survey. This sec- ond follow-up survey was fielded four years after the initial survey (which took place in Spring of 10th grade) and two years after the fielding of the first follow-up survey (in the Spring of 12th grade). The longitudinal nature of the ELS data enable tracking of students across the early graduate groups to determine the levels and types of post-secondary schooling, paid work and family status (e.g., if married, parent status). This chapter also contains my assessment of how well the “real world” findings from the ELS data stack up against the previously mentioned pop- ular culture stereotypes of early graduates (e.g., earnest achievers are seeking to fast track their college entry).

Similar to the approach used in the second analytic chapter (Chapter 5), this analysis in- volves chi-square tests of significance to determine if there are significant differences in educa- tion, work, marital status and parenthood across the different early graduate groups. If signifi- cant differences do exist, I will take the next step of investigating the findings through a nested logistical regression approach to determine if these differences remain significant after control- ling for other theorized factors. There are many important life course oriented hypotheses that will be tested in this final substantive chapter, including:

Hypothesis 7.1: East way outs are less likely than any other early graduate group to be en- rolled in formal post-high school education.

Hypothesis 7.2: Earnest achievers are more likely to attend post-high school schooling full time compared to other early graduates.

Hypothesis 7.3: Earnest achievers are the least likely early graduate group to be currently working for pay.

Hypothesis 7.4: Early escapees are the most likely early graduate group to have ever been married and, separately, to be a biological parent.

This assessment of differences in post-high school trajectories will provide important ini- tial post-high school life course learning across the different early graduate groups. This initial learning can then that can be compared to later follow-up ELS survey waves to better understand the trajectory and transition patterns and trends across the different groups of early graduates. This early graduate post-high school analysis represents the end of this dissertation’s analytic sections. The findings, interpretations, considerations and implications across these analytic chapters will be summarized and discussed in Chapter 8, the final chapter of this study.