Journal Article

Racial/Cultural Awareness Workshops and Post-College Civic Engagement: A Propensity Score Matching Approach

Park, Julie J., Denson, Nida, Bowman, Nicholas A.

2016

Overview

Racial/cultural awareness workshops constitute a salient form of co-curricular diversity engagement in higher education. Although these workshops are generally quite short in duration (often no more than two hours), previous research suggests that workshop participation is associated with undergraduate civic growth. The current study uses multilevel propensity score matching analyses to explore whether racial/cultural awareness workshops during college are associated with a variety of civic outcomes six years after graduation. Using a 10-year longitudinal sample of 8,634 alumni from 229 institutions, diversity workshop participation is significantly and positively related to 10 post-college behaviors, attitudes/beliefs, and skills/tendencies. Moreover, these effects are consistent regardless of participants' race/ethnicity, gender, and institutional affiliation.

• Publisher: SAGE Publications,American Educational Research Association
• Subject: Alumni / Attitude Change / Beliefs / Citizen participation / Civic engagement / Civics / College Graduates / College students / Colleges / Cultural Awareness / Cultural diversity / Diversity (Student) / Educational outcomes / Faculty diversity / Hierarchical Linear Modeling / Higher education / Longitudinal Studies / Outcomes of Education / Probability / Propensity Score Matching (PSM) technique / Racial Attitudes / Racial diversity / Racial Relations / Scores / Social change / Statistical Analysis / Student Development / Student diversity / Student engagement / Student Participation / Surveys / Undergraduate Students / Workshops