Analyzing university students’ careers using Multi-State Models

The methodologies adopted in the last decades to analyze students’ university careers using cohort studies mainly focus on the risk to observe one of the possible competing status, specifically dropout or graduation, after several years of follow-up. In this perspective all the other event types that may prevent the occurrence of the target event are treated as censored observations. A broader analysis of students’ university careers from undergraduate to postgraduate status reveals that several competing and non competing events may occur, some of which can been denoted as absorbing while others as intermediate. In this study we propose to use Multi-State Models to analyze students’ careers. This class of models allows us to take into account: i) the sequence of events experienced by students during their careers (first level degree, dropout, second level degree and others postgraduate studies etc.); ii) how the risk to experience the different states varies along the time; iii) the paths of transition between intermediate events.