The benefits of student engagement in diversity experiences on a range of college outcomes have been well documented. However, the potential influence of involvement in diversity experiences during college on the cognitive and intellectual outcomes of post-secondary education is only beginning to be understood. Gurin et al. (2002) made a…

Over the last several decades student affairs and assessment scholars who study college impact have utilized a number of different research design and statistical procedures in an attempt to control for the characteristics and propensities that lead students to self-select themselves into a particular intervention or experience. This is…

Understanding the developmental issues first-time college students face is critical for scholars and educators interested in learning and development. This purpose of this study was to investigate the differential impact of first-year college experiences on the moral reasoning development of 1,469 students in moral transition versus those in moral…

Using longitudinal data from the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education, our findings suggest that first-generation students are at a significant disadvantage across cognitive and psychosocial outcomes compared to students whose parents have at least some postsecondary education. Furthermore, we tested for the conditional effects of good…

A substantial proportion of college students have always worked while pursuing their college degree. However, despite decades of research on working college students, very little consensus has emerged about the effect of work on college student development. This study analyzes Wabash National Study (WNS) data from 2,931 first-year students at 19…

This study analyzed a multi-institutional and longitudinal data set to determine the impact of exposure to effective instruction on first-year persistence--defined as reenrolling for the second year of college at the same institution. Net of important confounding influences, exposure to effective instruction significantly increased the likelihood…

We explored the effects of fraternity and sorority membership on first-year students' development across various liberal arts educational outcomes at 11 institutions. Although many educators perceive fraternities and sororities as anti-intellectual organizations, fraternity and sorority members in this study did not differ from their unaffiliated…

Liberal arts colleges have prided themselves on providing students with a quality undergraduate education among a scholarly community who are interested in their holistic development. Past research has found students who attended liberal arts colleges more frequently experienced Chickering and Gamson's (1987, 1991) good practices in undergraduate…

Using multi-institution data and a longitudinal, pretest-posttest design, this study investigated the impact of honors programs on student experiences of good practices in undergraduate education as well as cognitive development in the first year of college. We found students in honors programs advantaged in terms of the good practice measures…

Using the principles of good practice in undergraduate education defined by Chickering and Gamson (1987, 1991), this study examined the role of institutional type in African-American students' experiences. Controlling for confounding influences, students attending historically Black colleges reported significantly greater levels of good practices…

This study estimated separately the unique effects of three dimensions of good practice and the global effects of a composite measure of good practices on the cognitive development, orientations to learning, and educational aspirations of students during their first year of college. Analyses of longitudinal data from a representative sample of…

The research literature on how college affects students is expanding at an exponential rate. This paper identifies and discusses ten directions for future research on college impact that have the potential to enhance the quality and importance of the evidence produced.

Researchers estimated the net effects of liberal arts colleges on 19 measures of good practices in undergraduate education grouped into seven categories. Analyses of 3-year longitudinal data from five liberal arts colleges, four research universities, and seven regional universities were conducted. Net of a battery of student precollege…

This study sought to estimate net differences between first-generation and other college students in their academic and nonacademic experience of college, and to estimate the net differences between first-generation students and their peers after two years of college in select cognitive, psychosocial, and status attainment outcomes. (Contains 16…

We examined the correlation between sex and cognitive outcomes of a national sample of students at four-year institutions. Outcomes data included objective tests and self-reported gains. In the presence of controls for a wide variety of potentially confounding variables, significant differences were found between women and men in outcomes and in…