Doctoral Dissertation Research: How Congregational Participation Shapes Higher Education Pathways in a Subpopulation

这个项目提供了来自不断增长的亚群体的学生和他们的父母如何理解宗教信仰和高等教育成就之间的联系的信息。这是一个宗教信仰程度高，高等教育程度低的亚群体。这些学生的宗教观点在影响他们的高等教育成就方面的作用在很大程度上被忽视了，但这可能是理解这一亚群体中教育分层的一个至关重要的部分。本项目使用现有的国家和地方行政数据，并进一步进行半结构化访谈，以调查对教育的行为和态度，宗教信仰与大学途径之间的关系，以及宗教领袖的影响。这些行政数据将用于调查宗教信仰与高级课程学习模式、大学申请、招生和大学选择之间的关系。采访了来自三个教会的神职人员、家长和年轻人，将探讨教会动态对年轻人选择大学的影响程度。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project provides information on how students from a growing subpopulation and their parents understand the connection between religiosity and higher education attainment. This is a subpopulation with high levels of religious adherence and low levels of higher education attainment. The role of these students’ religious perspectives in influencing their higher education achievement has been largely overlooked yet may be a vitally important piece of understanding educational stratification in this subpopulation.This project uses existing national and local administrative data and further conducts semi-structured interviews to investigate behaviors and attitudes toward education, the relationship between religious affiliation and college pathways, and the influence of faith leaders. The administrative data will be used to examine the association between religious affiliation and advanced course-taking patterns, college applications, enrollment and college choice. The interviews, with clergy, parents and young adults from three congregations, will explore the extent to which congregational dynamics have an impact on youths’ decisions about college.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.