LONGITUDINAL RESEARCH AND STUDENT CIVIC OUTCOMES

This chapter explores the contributions of conducting longitudinal research in higher education, either assessing students multiple times during college, following up with students after graduation or, ideally, both. It focuses on whether and how the university experience influences changes on civic development and related constructs, and how best to evaluate if these changes stand over years. The chapter explains research on civic outcomes with adolescents and college students. It presents solutions to the measurement, analytic, and methodological concerns that confront longitudinal research on civic outcomes in the years following higher education. In some instances, bivariate analyses can be useful for understanding the link among service learning, civic engagement, and civic outcomes. Correlations can be used to provide an overview of the relationships among not only constructs of interest but also variables that might confound the relationship among service learning, civic engagement, and civic outcomes.