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Scope and Method of Study. This study was designed to investigate the Developmental Studies Program at Northeastern State University in order to determine the effectiveness of the program as an adequate means of increasing persistence and academic performance of high-risk students enrolled in the fall of 1978 and the fall of 1979. Each experimental group was matched with a comparable control group in order to evaluate the variables: persistence and academic performance. This investigation hypothesized that there should be no significant difference between the Developmental Studies groups and the respective matched groups in mean GPA or attrition at the end of the first and second semester of study.
Table and narrative explanations were employed to present the data collected. The statistical treatment of the data to test the relationship between participation in the Developmental Studies Program and GPA was the Student's t test for means of two related groups. Chi-square was utilized to test the attrition variable.
Findings and Conclusions. Analyses of the data collected indicated that there was a definite relationship at the .05 level between first semester GPA and participation in the Developmental Studies Program at Northeastern State University. The Developmental Studies students were significantly better than the students in the control groups for the variable GPA during their initial enrollment. These gains were not evident during the second semester, and the control groups had second semester GPA's almost identical or above the developmental groups.
Regarding the variable persistence, there was no "difference" for students who completed the Developmental Studies Program. The study of the four semesters indicated no significant difference between the experimental and control groups.
Regarding program evaluation, only one of the four null hypotheses was rejected, which led to a general conclusion that the Developmental Studies approach, at Northeastern State University, was no more effective or ineffective than the traditional approach of placing high-risk students in the general studies program of the University.