| Jennifer Fredricks
Connecticut College
Participation in Structured and Unstructured Activities in After School Hours: Self-Selection and Adolescent Adjustment
In this project, I plan to use the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002) to examine the effects of participating in structured and unstructured out of school activities during 10th grade (BY) on outcomes at 12th grade (F1) and 2 years post high school (F2). Conducting methodologically rigorous research on the outcomes of organized activity participation is especially timely in the current policy climate. In an era of accountability pressures and fiscal constraints, the value of participating in organized non-academic activities is being questioned. Several studies have linked organized activity participation to indicators of positive adjustment. There have been several criticisms of this research including: 1) the use of cross-sectional data, 2) the failure to adjust for self-selection into activities, 3) the reliance on middle class white samples, and 4) the lack of research testing theoretically based hypotheses for the associations between participation and adjustment. This project will contribute to the literature: 1) by using propensity score methods to adjust for self-selection biases, 2) by testing whether demographic factors moderate the relation between unstructured and structured activity participation and adjustment, 3) by using structural equation modeling to test whether peer characteristics are a mediator between indicators of activity involvement (intensity and breadth) and academic adjustment, and finally 4) by examining both linear and non-linear relations between breadth and frequency of organized activity participation and adjustment.
Back to Funded Research Grants Page |