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Student Participation in Community Service Activity / Highlights



Highlights

  • About half (49 percent) of students in 6th through 12th grade said they already participated in community service at some time during the 1995-96 school year. They were interviewed over the period January 2, 1996, through April 13, 1996, so some additional students may have participated later in that school year.

    • Females, white students, students for whom English was the primary language they spoke at home, students who received high grades, and 11th and 12th graders were most likely to participate.

    • The greater the number of other activities the students participated in (student government, other school activities, non-school activities, and working for pay), the more likely they were to participate in community service.

    • Students were also more likely to participate if an adult in the household participated in community service, and the highest degree held by a parent was a college degree or higher.

    • Students were more likely to participate if they attended private (especially church-related) schools. The relationship between school type and participation persisted in a multivariate analysis that adjusted for differences in school policies and student, family and community characteristics.

  • Eighty-six percent of all students were in schools that encouraged community service, either through requiring participation or by arranging or offering community service.

    • Students who were in schools that arranged or offered community service were more likely to participate than students in other schools.

    • Students' participation in community service did not vary significantly based on schools' requirements that students participate.

    • The relationships between school practices and student participation continued to hold after statistically adjusting for key characteristics of the students, their families, and their schools.

    • Public school students tended to be in schools that arranged but did not require community service, while private school students were split between schools that only arranged community service and schools that both arranged and required community service.

  • About half (56 percent) of the students who participated regularly in community service said that their service was incorporated into the school curriculum in some way (service-learning).

    • Students were more likely to encounter service-learning if they were at schools that both required and arranged community service than at schools that only arranged community service.



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