After nearly four decades of growth, the number of people held in U.S. prisons has begun to decline. In an era of decarceration, social scientists need to understand prisoner reentry experiences. Longitudinal studies are one strategy to accomplish this goal. Yet, the retention of a formerly incarcerated population across waves of interviews is…

This brief summarizes Internet-based research into other industries that may offer useful analogies for thinking about student attrition in higher education, in particular for setting realistic benchmarks for reductions in attrition. Reducing attrition to zero or close to zero is not a realistic possibility in higher education. Students are…

Pointing to declines in self-reported criminality across waves of the National Youth Survey, several researchers have concluded that "testing effects" may render longitudinal self-report data unreliable. This article argues that the issue remains unsettled on two accounts. First, alternative explanations for the declines have not been fully…