Design, Sites, and Data Sources
The NWoW Study launched in July 2017 with a two-year iterative development phase to strengthen and refine all three components of the program. Three California community colleges were selected to be partners in this work: Shasta College, Santa Rosa Junior College, and Folsom Lake College. Drawing on quantitative data as well as extensive interviews and related qualitative research, the research team provided comments and recommendations for improving the program. This iterative improvement process took place through fall 2019.
The research team also used psychometric analysis as a test of each of the program’s 10 soft-skill assessments to produce recommendations on improving the assessments. For the psychometric analysis, the research team ran descriptive statistics and conducted preliminary analyses using item response theory, and examined psychometric properties, such as item difficulty, item-total correlation, total score distributions, total score correlations, Cronbach’s alpha, and likelihood ratio tests.
The findings from the study’s activities are included in the project’s products and publications, providing lessons to developers, policymakers, researchers, and practitioners who are using—or are interested in using—NWoW or similar programming.
