Testing Qualitative Indicators of Precollege Factors in Tinto’s Attrition Model: A Community College Student Population

This study investigated how accurately Tinto’s (1975) theoretical model predicts student attrition among academically underprepared students in a two-year community commuter college. The authors examined four exogenous variables (the effects of family background, pre-college schooling, getting ready, and encouragement from significant others) and three endogenous variables (initial commitment, academic integration, and social integration). More important, it quantifies and tests ethnographic precollege characteristics that previous quantitative tests of Tinto’s models have not used.