2010 - School Racial Composition and Biracial Adolescents' School Attachment

Attribution: Cheng, Simon, & Klugman, Joshua
Researchers: Joshua KlugmanSimon Cheng
University Affiliation: University of Connecticut, Temple University
Email: simon.cheng@uconn.edu; joshua.klugman@temple.edu
Research Question:
1) Do self-identified biracial students differ from mono-racial students in their sense of belonging in school? 2) How does the racial makeup of the student body in school affect biracial adolescents' school attachment? 3) How do the above relationships vary by type of biracial identification?
Published: 1
Journal Name or Institutional Affiliation: The Sociological Quarterly
Journal Entry: Volume 51 Issue 1 Pp. 150-178
Year: 2010
Findings:

Find that without taking school racial composition into account, biracial students have lower school attachment than their mono-racial counterparts. For white, black, and Hispanic mono-racial students, school attachment increases with the proportion of students who are their same race increases. The effects of same raced peers do not exist for the other racial groups observed.

Biracial students who are partially identified as white can potentially adapt to a variety of racial contexts due to their partially-white identity. Students who are partially-black identified have decreased attachment in majority white schools, but increased attachment in schools with a larger minority composition.

Keywords: AttachmentAttitudesCross Race FriendshipsRacial CompositionRegions: NationalMethodologies: QuantitativeAnalysis Methods: Descriptive StatisticsMultilevel Models Sampling Frame:Adolescents in grades 7-12 in the United States
Sampling Types: RandomAnalysis Units: IndividualData Types: Quantitative-Cross Sectional
Data Description:

Data were taken from the Add Health dataset. Using Wave-1 survey data, the authors analyze a final sample of 62,839 mono-racial adolescents and 6,413 biracial adolescents. The dependent variable, “school attachment” is calculated using the following Add Health items: 1) I fell close to people at this school 2) I feel like I am part of this school 3) I am happy at this school.

DV: School Attachment

IV: School Racial Composition

Controls: Gender, school year, GPA, number of friends, number of sports teams participated on, parental education, family size, family structure (single parent or two parent household), geographic region, average parental education of the school, midsize school status, private school status.

Theoretical Framework:
Relevance:
Archives: K-12 Integration, Desegregation, and Segregation Abstracts