MAITHREYI GOPALAN

Project Title and Abstract: Using Multi-site Multiple Mediator Instrumental Variables to Explore Compliance and Mediator Effects in the NSLM

Multisite trials are designed to estimate the average as well as heterogeneous treatment effects of interventions across sites. However, in many cases, compliance with treatment assignment is imperfect. In this proposed study, I will use instrumental variable (IV) approaches to (1) analyze “compliance” to treatment and (2) explore the various mediating pathways through which the intervention affects student achievement. Specifically, I will develop a conceptual framework using the multisite multiple-mediator instrumental variables models to identify and analyze the various hypothesized mediators of the growth mindset intervention, thereby illuminating how the intervention affects student achievement. Broadly, the goals of this project are to contribute to new understanding regarding the consequences of differential compliance to the treatment in social psychological interventions, and to analyze the effects of differential mediating processes across multiple sites using IV approaches.

Associated Publications

• College Students’ Sense of Belonging and Mental Health Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic
• A customized belonging intervention improves retention of socially disadvantaged students at a broad-access university
• College students’ sense of belonging: A national perspective
• How does adopting a growth mindset improve academic performance? Probing the underlying mechanisms in a nationally representative sample
• A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement
• Is the National Study of Learning Mindsets nationally-representative?

About the Researcher

Maithreyi Gopalan, Ph.D. in Public Affairs, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Education Policy Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. She was a 2018-2019 Fellow.

Fellows during the same period included: Guillaume Basse, Nigel Bosch, Michael Broda, Alexander Browman, Jazmin Brown-Iannuzzi, Nicholas Buttrick, Soobin Kim, Alison Koenka, Manyu Li, Xu Qin, Eunjin Seo, and Nicole Sorhagen.