The Impact of Examination Modalities and Higher Education Structures on Individual Study Paths: A Survey Experiment

Due to the high demand for academically qualified personnel, ensuring study success is of social and economic importance. In this context, the effect of institutional regulations of study and examination organizations on study behaviour is surprisingly unexplored, despite new institutionalism being a major paradigm in sociological research. We present the structure of a survey experiment aiming to gain insights into the mechanisms about which degree of obligation in examination modalities encourages academic success and which hinders it. The study belongs to the BMBF-funded (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung) project "Bedeutung des institutionellen Kontextes von Studienabbruch und Langzeitstudium (BiK)", which consists of Leibniz University Hannover, the German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW) and the University of Mannheim/Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES). The project seeks to investigate the effect of the study-related institutional context on student dropout, long-term study and study paths at the three levels of federal state, university and study programme.