Participation in High-Impact Practices: Considering the Role of Institutional Context and a Person-Centered Approach

Using data from the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education (WNSLAE), this study considered institutions as “incubators,” where institutions develop students by providing them with essential resources and services to thrive. This approach also recognizes the importance of institutional norms and identities in shaping students’ social and cultural competencies. Moreover, we used a person-centered approach to identify students’ participation patterns in high-impact practices (HIPs). Instead of examining relations among variables—as with variable-centered approaches—person-centered approaches find similarities in a collection of variables to identify distinct student types. This approach allows us to understand the interconnections between students and their college environment through their participation patterns in HIPs. We identified five student types based on their participation patterns in HIPs: nonparticipant, career focused, experiential learner, academically oriented, and active engager. Almost 23% of the variance in students’ patterns in HIP participation lies across institutions. Controlling for a host of student-level characteristics and college experiences marginally accounted for this institution-level variance. Instead, institution type accounted for the largest share of the variance, which is consistent with an institutional identity and norms of liberal education.