A propensity score matching study of participation in community activities: A path to positive outcomes for youth in New Zealand?

Abstract

Extracurricular activities are important in many young people's lives and have been associated with positive academic, psychological, and social outcomes. However, most previous research has been limited to school-based activities in the North American context. This study expands existing literature by analyzing longitudinal data from more than 1,300 young Māori and European New Zealanders, using propensity score matching techniques to control for selection effects. Results suggest that youth participating in community-based activities experienced greater social support than nonparticipants. For Māori youth, participating in nonsports activities was associated with later benefits, while for New Zealand European youth, benefits were associated with sports activities. Participants of different ages reported different types of benefits. These findings highlight points of similarity and difference between New Zealand and North American youth and provide a better understanding of the positive impacts of community-based activities for young people.

University Students with Reading Difficulties: Do Perceived Supports and Comorbid Difficulties Predict Well‐Being and GPA?

“…Alternatively, those who feel supported in close relationships seek support and resources from their community. This finding reflects O'Connor and Jose () who found that participation in community activities was related to greater social support, but is in contrast to Herrero and Gracia () who failed to find a similar link. Further research is warranted, including longitudinal studies designed to understand the direction of this relationship.…”

“…Feelings of belonging to a community (Herrero et al., ) and community participation (O'Connor & Jose, ) have been linked to higher life satisfaction. In our study, community support did not predict life satisfaction.…”

Effects of participation in school sports on academic and social functioning

“…With the exception of special education status, we selected these variables, because they have been used successfully as matching variables in two studies which examined the association between participation in out of school activities and youth development (O'Connor & Jose, 2012;Zarrett et al, 2009). We decided to include special education status as an additional matching variable because previous research has shown that students receiving special education services were associated with lower levels of engagement in organized activities (Denault & Déry, 2015) and lower academic achievement (Bussing et al, 2012) than their peers not receiving special education services.…”

“…To date, there have been only a few studies using propensity score matching to examine the relationship between participation in extracurricular activities and academics (O'Connor & Jose, 2012;Zarrett et al, 2009). As noted earlier, the propensity scores generated are limited by the selection of the matching variables.…”

“…This is problematic, because these omitted variables could potentially bias the matching process and the overall study results -known as the omitted variable bias (Zarrett et al, 2009). This study strove to reduce this bias through the selection of key matching variables used in previous studies (O'Connor & Jose, 2012;Zarrett et al, 2009) as well as variables that have a demonstrated relationship with the dependent variables, and participation in schoolorganized sports (Arceneaux, Gerber, & Green, 2010;Caliendo & Kopeinig, 2008). Furthermore, the use of multilevel modeling in generating propensity scores helps to minimize the effect of the self-selection bias of students and leads to a more precise matching process by matching students who participated in school-organized sports and those who did not from the same school.…”