Poster #90 - Participation in Extracurricular and Civic Activities: Do They Predict Academic Expectations?

• In Event: 2-055 - Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Section - Education, Schooling

Integrative Statement

Although participating in evidence-based positive youth development (PYD) programs has academic benefits (Catalano, Berglund, Ryan, Lonczak, & Hawkins, 2004), these programs are not readily available to all youth for reasons such as insufficient resources and unequal distribution (Eichas, Montgomery, Meca, & Kurtines, 2017). Under such circumstances, how might PYD be promoted? Extant studies suggest that engaging in organized extracurricular (e.g., drama lessons) and civic (e.g., volunteering) activities might serve as effective alternatives to PYD programs (Gardner, Roth, & Brooks-Gunn, 2008; Schwartz, Cappella, & Seidman, 2015). To evaluate this claim, the present study explored the extent to which extracurricular activities were related to academic outcomes. Specifically, in extension to the literature that has primarily operationalized these outcomes as academic achievement (Gardner et al., 2008), the present study focused on academic expectations (i.e., the expectations that youth held towards their future academic attainment). Further, in recognition that extracurricular activities might have differential implications for boys and girls (Luthar, Shoum, & Brown, 2006), potential sex differences were accounted. Participation in extracurricular activities were hypothesized to be positively associated with academic expectations for boys and girls alike.
These associations were evaluated with a secondary dataset. Participants included 1,187 youth aged 16-17 (565 boys) from diverse cultural groups across ten Canadian provinces who participated in the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (2006-2007). Extracurricular activities were evaluated by engagement in sports (e.g., baseball), aesthetic sports (e.g., dance), or arts (e.g., music) lessons; civic activities were evaluated by engagement in community, religious, or political groups, as well as volunteering activities. Academic expectations were categorized as low (i.e., secondary school leavers to college graduates) and high (i.e., university and above). Data was analyzed separately for boys and girls using logistic regressions.
Findings revealed that both extracurricular and civic activities predicted higher academic expectations among boys and girls, respectively χ²(5) = 43.22 and 39.16, ps < .001. Specifically (see Table 1), boys tended to hold higher academic expectations when they participated in sports (OR = 1.66, CI = 1.16, 2.38, p < .01), arts (OR = 2.00. CI = 1.35, 2.98; p < .001), and volunteering activities (OR = 1.67, CI = 1.07, 2.60, p < .05); girls tended to hold higher academic expectations when they participated in aesthetic sports (OR = 1.99, CI = 1.31, 3.02; p < .001) and engaged in community, religious or political groups (OR = 1.52, CI = 1.04, 2.23, p < .05). Together, these findings offer insights to the limited understanding on how extracurricular and civic activities might promote academic outcomes beyond that of achievement (Gibbs, Erickson, Dufur, & Miles, 2015). Additionally, they provide implications to interventions by elucidating how potential benefits of extracurricular and civic engagement might vary within the Canadian cultural context depending on the sex of the adolescent.

Authors

• Tracy Wong, McGill University
  Presenting Author

• Xiaoxue Kong, McGill University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Anne-Marie Parent, McGill University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Chiaki Konishi, McGill University
  Non-Presenting Author