2015 - High School Socioeconomic Composition and College Choice: Multilevel Mediation Via Organizational Habitus, School, Practices, Peer and Staff Attitudes

Attribution: Palardy, Gregory J.
Researchers: Gregory J. Palardy
University Affiliation: University of California, Riverside
Email: gjpalardy@gmail.com
Research Question:

1) Is high school socioeconomic composition (SEC) predictive of students' college choice?

2) Does SEC have a direct effect on college choice and indirect effects mediated by college choice organizational habitus (CCOH) related school practices and peer, family, and staff attitudes?

3) To what degree do direct and indirect effects of SEC depend on student and school input characteristics?

Published: Yes
Journal Name or Institutional Affiliation: School Effectiveness and School Improvement
Journal Entry: Vol. 26, No. 3, Pp. 329-353
Year: 2015
Findings:

– Students from high-SEC schools are enrolled in selective colleges approximately 4 times the rate of their low-SEC counterparts.
– Students attending low-SEC schools will typically encounter a college choice organizational habitus that is less conducive to attending college, particularly a selective 4-year college, than students attending high-SEC schools.
– The effects of peer attitudes on students had the strongest mediation effect on college choice and were approximately 8 times the magnitude of the staff attitudes.
– The average student SEC at low-SEC schools is nearly 3 standard deviations lower than at high-SEC schools, and more than double the proportion of the students are from under-represented racial/ethnic groups.

Scholarship Types: Journal Article Reporting Empirical ResearchKeywords: CollegeHigh School CompositionOrganizational HabitusPeer EffectsPeer InfluencesSES CompositionRegions: NationalMethodologies: QuantitativeResearch Designs: Secondary Survey DataAnalysis Methods: Multilevel Modeling Sampling Frame:High school sophomores in America in 2002
Sampling Types: Nationally RepresentativeAnalysis Units: SchoolStudentData Types: Quantitative-Longitudinal
Data Description:
  • This paper utilizes the theory of college choice organizational habitus(CCOH), which can be described as the collective sensibilities, preferences, and values of the school regarding postsecondary education. The theory of CCOH suggests that normative structures and collective attitudes regarding college choice are at least partially born out of the socioeconomic-based school culture related to the value of a college degree and the feasibility of earning one.
  • Education Longitudinal Study of 2002. Based on the data from 15,325 tenth grade students throughout 752 public and private schools. This study focused on 10,151 students in 580 public schools.
  • DV: College choice (4-point ordinal outcome based on the selectivity of the post-secondary institution the student enrolls in directly after high school.
  • IVs: college choice organizational habitus, school inputs, student postsecondary controls, and student background controls.
  • Socioeconomic composition and six measures of college choice organizational habitus are the central independent variables of this study. Socioeconomic composition (SEC) is the school mean of students’ SES, which was measured in both 2002 and 2004, when students were in 10th and 12th grades. The average of the 2002 and 2004 measures was used to provide an estimate of SEC during the period of this study.
  • The six measures of CCOH are organized into two classes based on the work of McDonough (1997), normative structures and collective attitudes about college choice. Normative structures are essentially school practices and processes that imbue the organizational perception of the values and feasibility of various postsecondary options. The specific normative structures used in this study are college prep curriculum, homework emphasis, and academic mission. College prep curriculum is an ordinal measure on an 8-point scale indicating the highest level math course a student took during high school. Because college preparatory math is generally not required by states in America for high school graduation, but 2 to 4 years is required for admission to many 4-year colleges and almost all selective colleges, this variable is considered a proxy measure for a school-wide curriculum focusing on college prep course taking. Academic mission is a factor score of principal-reported items on the degree to which teachers, counselors, and students focus on academics. Homework emphasis is the mean number of hours students report spending on homework per week.
  • Student selection into schools is non-random and student inputs differ substantially across the sample schools.
  • CCOH is an abstract and theoretic construct; as such, it is difficult, if not impossible, to measure directly. To investigate such constructs using quantitative methods, one must rely on proxy measures and latent variables, which arguably measure something more concrete than CCOH.
Theoretical Framework:
Relevance:Links high school composition and its impacts on college choice.
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