Few college experiences elicit as much controversy as racial/ethnic student organizations. Critics argue that these student groups promote racial division and segregation, whereas supporters counter these claims and suggest instead that they facilitate college adjustment, learning, and growth. Clearly, some students are quite predisposed to…

Although used frequently in related fields such as K-12 education research, educational psychology, sociology, and social survey research, latent class analysis (LCA) has been infrequently used in higher education. This article provides higher education researchers with a pedagogical application of LCA to classify entering freshmen based on their…

According to prevailing theory and anecdotal evidence, the congruence between institutional attributes and students' needs, interests, and preferences plays a key role in promoting college satisfaction and retention. However, this assertion has received little direct empirical attention, and the few available studies appear to have some key…

This paper delves into a facet of socioeconomic diversity relatively unaddressed in the literature: student reports of cross-class interaction ("reported CCI"). Previous research has found that student interaction across social class is a significant predictor of cross-racial interaction, but it is unknown whether the actual…

Using data from the 2004-2007 National Study of Living Learning Programs, the only national dataset offering longitudinal information on outcomes associated with living-learning (L/L) program participation, this study investigated the role of L/L programs and other college environments in the professional outcome expectations of women in science,…

The educational and societal benefits of promoting meaningful interracial interactions during college are well-established. While most previous studies have examined the relationship between interracial interactions and college student outcomes among all students, much less is known about the extent to which these effects depend upon student…

The purpose of this article is to provide higher education researchers with an illustrative example of meta-analysis utilizing hierarchical linear modeling (HLM). This article demonstrates the step-by-step process of meta-analysis using a recently-published study examining the effects of curricular and co-curricular diversity activities on racial…

In most multi-campus studies of college impact that have been conducted over the past four decades, investigators have relied on ordinary least squares (OLS) regression as the analytic method of choice. Recently, however, some investigators have advocated the use of Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM), a method specifically designed for analyses…