Developing College Students’ Civic Identity: The Role of Social Perspective Taking and Sociocultural Issues Discussions

The development of college students’ civic identity is understudied, but worthy of attention because of its salience to many students and higher education’s commitment to fostering an engaged citizenry. Using 45,271 participants from the 2009 Multi-Institutional Study of Leadership, this study uses structural equation modeling to explore relationships among social change behaviors, sociocultural issues discussions, social perspective taking, and civic identity. Results show positive, moderate relationships of social change behaviors and social perspective taking on civic identity, and weak, positive relationships for social change behaviors on social perspective taking and sociocultural issues discussions on civic identity. Implications for practice and research are discussed.