Article Recalibrating Our Understanding of Retention Amber L. Stephenson 1 , David B. Yerger 2 , and D. Alex Heckert 3 Abstract In a study exploring how organizational identification impacted college retention and performance outcomes at a university in the United States, we found the mere act of taking the survey emerged as an unexpectedly strong result. Using propensity score matching, we found that those who took the voluntary survey during the first week of school were 6%, 9%, and 11% more likely to retain by the second, third, and fourth semesters, respectively. Participation in a short survey had notable retention predict- ive power 18 months later. These results provoke a series of questions on retention much more broadly considered and invite us to recalibrate our understanding of mechanisms for improving retention. Keywords college student retention, propensity score matching, higher education, persistence, attrition College student retention is perhaps one of the most widely explored phenomena in higher education. Over the past 50 years, common understanding of retention evolved from being a purely psychological function of individual capacity and capability, to the notion of environmental influences, to the concepts of success- ful social integration and involvement, to a broader perspective highlighting a Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice 2020, Vol. 22(1) 17–26 ! The Author(s) 2017 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/1521025117721852 journals.sagepub.com/home/csr 1 School of Business, Clarkson University, Schenectady, NY, USA 2 Department of Economics, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, PA, USA 3 Department of Sociology, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, PA, USA Corresponding Author: Amber L. Stephenson, School of Business, Clarkson University, 80 Nott Terrace, Schenectady, NY 12308, USA. Email: astephen@clarkson.edu