Measuring the impact of educational interventions on the academic performance of academic development students in second-year microeconomics

This is the accepted version of the following article: Smith, L. & Ranchhod, V. 2012. Measuring the impact of educational interventions on the academic performance of academic development students in second-year microeconomics. South African Journal of Economics. 80(3): 431-448., which has been published in final form at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1813-6982.2011.01287.x.This paper analyses the impact of educational interventions made in the first- and second-year microeconomics courses on academic development students' final mark in the second-year course. It also addresses issues of methodology, specification, and statistical analysis with respect to other studies in the field. The results suggest that the educational interventions in the first year had a positive impact on the academic performance of the academic development cohort, relative to the mainstream cohort for the first period (2000-2002). The results also suggest that the educational interventions introduced in the second period (2003-2005), in the form of voluntary workshops, improved the academic performance of the academic development and mainstream cohorts