Not arguing with you about that, what you're saying is very standard. The data across the literature shows similar results. The problem is that race is so intertwined with SES in the United States that any causal model has to use race as a correlated predictor when including socio-economic status as a predictor.
Run your model through something like Lisrel or AMOS (both are statistical programs that do causal modelling and latent variable analyses). One of the critical analyses to look at is the goodness of fit indicator or GFI. This chi square value ought not to statistically significant if your candidate model is a good fit to the data. In other words if the GFI is statistically significant there is at least one other hypothetical model that provides a better fit to the data than the current candidate. Taking your model, I would expect that you'd get at best a marginal value for the GFI, ( .05 < p < .20). Including race as a correlated independent variable will substantially increase the GFI, (.10 < p < .50). The real difficulty with correlated models is determining the direct and indirect influences of any one predictor on the dependent variables, and the other independent variables downstream from it. At best you can say that in conjunction with X, Y has a direct influence of .zz on the dependent variables, and an indirect influence of .www. But you cannot really determine the sole influences of Y. In this case we can say that Race and SES has a substantial effect on later school achievement based on the NORC HS and Beyond dataset. But we cannot statistically separate the effects of both variables on the dependent variables at this time. larry On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 12:52 PM, Sam <[email protected]> wrote: > > The report seems to be saying race itself does not cause drop outs. > > In these cases chances of dropping out increased significantly: > Being poor, low SES. > Raised by a single parent. > Move around a lot. > PTA involvement > Parental education achievement expectations > Behavior including smoking. > > So it's not being a minority that causes poverty, it's the culture of > being poor. > At least that's what I got out of it. > > What you seem to be getting is since a higher percentage of poor are > minorities that must be the cause. > > > On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 8:18 AM, Larry C. Lyons <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Its still legitimate. The longitudinal sampling techniques took such >> into account. Go to the site and look at how they do that sort of >> research. I'm pretty satisfied with their methodology, as is the >> entire field. You need to do your own research about it. I don't see >> why I ought to provide freebies when I charge a consulting fee for >> doing such. >> > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology-Michael-Dinowitz/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:323375 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
