Predicting Student Involvement in the First Year of College: The Influence of Students’ Precollege Professional and Career Attitudes

Many students engage in cocurricular involvement experiences in college, and research on student involvement has suggested benefits for students in terms of college outcomes (for reviews see, Astin, 1993; Mayhew, Rockenbach, Bowman, Seifert, & Wolniak, 2016). Involvement has been positively associated with academic self-confidence (Berger & Milem, 2002), academic success and satisfaction (Webber, Krylow, & Zhang, 2013), critical thinking skills (Gellin, 2003), psychological well-being (Seifert et al., 2008), psychosocial development (Foubert & Grainger, 2006), and positive civic attitudes (Trolian & Barnhardt, 2017). Astin (1999) defined a highly involved student as one who “devotes considerable energy to studying, spends much time on campus, participates actively in student organizations, and interacts frequently with faculty members and other students” (p. 518). While prior research has considered the effects of student involvement on several college outcomes, limited research has examined whether students’ precollege attitudes are predictors of college student involvement. I addressed this gap in the literature by examining whether students’ professional and career attitudes are predictors of participation in several college cocurricular involvement experiences. This study focuses on the first year of college, in which students’ precollege attitudes are likely to have the most immediate influence on their involvement choices.

Research on involvement has considered factors related to participation in student activities (Handy et al., 2010; Montelongo, 2002), motivations for involvement (Jones & Hill, 2003), and ways of encouraging involvement in college (Heiberger & Harper, 2008). For example, Kuh, Gonyea, and Williams (2005) noted that students who expected to be involved in college activities were more likely to become involved. Olsen, Kuh, Schilling, Connolly, and Simmons (1998) found that students who had high levels of achievement in high school were more likely to be involved in a range of activities during college. Researchers have also examined motivations for engaging in college involvement. For example, Jones and Hill (2003) determined that students who engaged in community service during college were motivated by both internal (e.g., the desire to make a difference) and external factors (e.g., the desire to build one’s résumé). Holzweiss, Rahn, and Wickline (2007) found that students joined academic and nonacademic campus organizations both to prepare for their future careers and to socialize and make friends.

One potential motivator for involvement may stem from students’ perceptions that involvement is a way to build one’s résumé to be more attractive to future employers. College marketing materials often signal the importance of becoming involved and the potential for involvement to build one’s résumé and career skills (Hartley & Morphew, 2008; Will & Callison, 2006). Indeed, Barr and McNeilly (2002) found that recruiters valued “internships, part-time jobs, and leadership positions in university organizations [as] better indicators of employability than classroom experiences” (p. 168). While cocurricular involvement may be highlighted as a way for students to prepare for a successful transition from college to the world of work, prior researchers have not examined the connection between students’ attitudes about professional success and their engagement in cocurricular involvement activities. In light of this gap I addressed the following research question: Do students’ precollege professional and career attitudes predict participation in several involvement experiences during the first year of college?

METHOD

Data are from the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education (WNS), a longitudinal, multi-institutional study of college experiences and outcomes. The WNS includes three student cohorts: those who began college in Fall 2006, Fall 2007, and Fall 2008. This study uses data from all three cohorts of the WNS, which included 30 liberal arts colleges, 7 research universities, and 9 regional universities. Because the WNS was primarily concerned with the impact of liberal arts experiences, liberal arts colleges were purposefully oversampled. WNS student participants were assessed in the fall and spring of their first year and again in the spring of their fourth year of college. Participants included 17,195 full-time, first-time undergraduate students, 6,236 of whom participated at the first and third assessment points, for an overall response rate of 36.2%. The analytical sample used in this study included 5...