LRC and Intentions to Persist

The Relationship of Advising LRC with Intentions to Persist

**Figure 1. First-Year Students’ Advising LRC Score by Intent to Return to the Institution**Go to an accessible version of Figure 1 data.

Improving first-year retention is a major challenge for many institutions. When asked near the end of the first year, most students express an intent to return for their second year. However, students who intend to return had higher Advising LRC scores than their peers who do not intend to return or are unsure (Figure 1). Overall, the amount of listening, respecting, and caring experienced by those who intend to return is significantly higher than those who responded "not sure" or "no" (do not intend to return) (p < .001). These results suggest insitutions should investigate their student advising experiences closely to further undertand their specific persistence factors.

Such results can differ among students by identity group. For example, first-year students with a non-binary gender identity (those selecting “another gender identity”) are less likely to intend to return, and those who intend to leave have lower LRC scores than their peers.

However, those who do intend to return experience advisors who listen, respect, and care on par with the experiences of man- and woman-identifying peers (Figure 2). Again, these results confirm the connections between beneficial advising practices and student success.

First-year students across all racial/ethnic identities who intend to return for their second year reported significantly higher LRC than their peers within the same racial/ethnic identities who do not intend to return or are not sure (p < .001) (Figure 3). For those intending to return, LRC means range between 39 and 42. For students who are not sure or students do not intend to return the LRC mean score ranges between 27 and 34.