How extracurricular activities influence adolescent students’ social and emotional skills: Evidence from a network analysis with multinational sample

• In Event: Roundtable Session 9
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Empowering Youth Through Digital Capital, Extracurriculars, and Skills Development

Proposal

Social and emotional skills are crucial for the comprehensive development of adolescents, enhancing academic performance, social adaptability, and mental health. Extracurricular activities serve as an important supplement to in-class curricula, providing diverse platforms where students can cultivate teamwork, communication, and emotional management skills in practice. However, existing research often focuses on single types of extracurricular activities or social and emotional skills, lacking cross-cultural comparisons and failing to fully reveal the complex interactions between activities and abilities.
This study focuses on global students participating in the SSES2023 assessment, including 17,650 students from the 10-year-old group and 47,962 students from the 15-year-old group. The research covers six European countries: Helsinki (Finland), Turin (Italy), A-Ro (Italy), Bulgaria, Ukraine, and Spain; five Asian countries: Jinan (China), Gunma (Japan), Delhi (India), Kudus (Indonesia), and Dubai (UAE); and four Latin American countries: Chile, Peru, Sobral (Brazil), and Bogotá (Colombia). The study employs R 4.3.3 for network analysis to explore the complex interactions between extracurricular activity participation and the development of social and emotional skills in different cultural contexts.
The results indicate significant variations in the interaction between extracurricular activities and social and emotional skills across regions. For Asian countries, the three key extracurricular activities closely related to the development of students' social and emotional skills are art clubs or activities (achievement motivation and creativity), sports teams or activities (vitality), and debate clubs or activities (assertiveness). For European youth, the most crucial extracurricular activities are sports teams or activities, art clubs or activities, and foreign language courses/activities, each closely linked to students' vitality, creativity, inclusiveness, and achievement motivation. For Latin American youth, important activities affecting social and emotional skills include sports teams or activities (vitality), art clubs or activities (creativity and trust), foreign language courses/activities (inclusiveness), and debate clubs or activities (assertiveness). Additionally, there is a negative relationship between computer clubs and inclusiveness, where participation in computer clubs hinders the enhancement of students' inclusiveness.
Centrality analysis reveals that for the network of extracurricular activities and social and emotional skills across Asia, Europe, and Latin America, debate clubs or activities, publishing activities (e.g., newspapers, yearbooks, literary magazines), and book clubs are the three activities most closely connected with others and play a significant role in the network. Further network structural invariance and overall network strength invariance tests indicate significant differences in the network structure of extracurricular activities and social and emotional skills among students of different genders (male-female), ages (10-year-old group vs. 15-year-old group), and socioeconomic statuses (low-medium-high). The discussion section analyzes the impact mechanisms of different extracurricular activities and cultural differences.

Authors

• Qianyu Zhou, East China Normal University

• Hong Zhang, East China Normal University

• Hanwei Tang