cjrc-sponsored research

  • Project:
  • Extracurricular Activities at School and Adolescent Wellbeing of Immigrant Children in the US

  • Investigator:
  • Xin Jiang (Sociology)

  • Abstract:
  • It has long been investigated that there is an association between participation in school extracurricular activities and adolescent development. Extracurricular activities as one of the major school settings occupy a noticeable portion of adolescent life. Approximately 60% of high school sophomores and 70% of high school seniors in the U.S. participate in at least one extracurricular activity (Bank et. al. 2007). It has been held that participation in school-based extracurricular activities provides adolescent opportunities to build supportive social networks, acquire human capital, develop physical and intellectual skills, and establish self-identification. Given the importance in accounting for extracurricular activities to better understand the effect of social context on adolescent development, this study intended to verify the variability of the effect of extracurricular activities on two groups of adolescents: immigrant children and non-immigrant children. In order to explore the topic, this study uses The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (also known as Add Health, the Add Health Study, and the Add Health Survey) and a nationally representative study supported by three program project grants from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).