During the last decade higher education organizations and educational policy makers have substantially increased efforts to incentivize study abroad participation. These efforts are grounded in the longstanding belief that study abroad participation improves intercultural competence-an educational outcome critical in a globalized 21 st century economy. Yet decades of evidence that appear to support this claim are repeatedly limited by a series of methodological weaknesses including small homogenous samples, an absence of longitudinal study design, no accounting for potential selection bias, and the lack of controls for potentially confounding demographic and college experience variables. Thus, a major competing explanation for differences found between students who do and do not study abroad continues to be the possibility that these differences existed prior to participation. The current study sought to determine the effect of study abroad on intercultural competence among 1,593 participants of the 2006 cohort of the Wabash National Study on Liberal Arts Education. The Wabash National Study is a longitudinal study of undergraduates that gathered pre-and post-test measures on numerous educational outcomes, an array of institutional and self-reported pre-college characteristics, and a host of college experiences. The current study employed both propensity score matching and covariate adjustment methods to account for pre-college characteristics, college experiences, the selection effect, and the clustered nature of the data to both crossvalidate findings and provide guidance for future research. Under such rigorous analytic conditions, this study found that study abroad generated a statistically significant positive effect on intercultural competence; an effect ACKNOWLEDGMENTS For any substantial recognition bestowed upon an individual, there are in reality many who deserve credit for the accomplishment. To my long-time friends and family, your constant encouragement and support carried me when my confidence waned. To the faculty in the Higher Education program at the University of Iowa, your wealth of expertise and perspective provided a foundation of knowledge for which I will always be grateful. To Ernie Pascarella, Mike Paulsen, and Paul Umbach, I cannot thank you enough for the opportunity you gave me to test the deep waters of educational research. I look forward to many more years of fruitful collaboration and friendship. It is hard to put into words my appreciation for the community of graduate students with whom I had the extreme fortune of sharing this experience. You created an atmosphere of support and camaraderie that made all of the hours spent together absolutely worthwhile. In particular, Kathy Goodman and Georgianna Martin, thank you for willingly engaging in the deep, albeit sometimes meandering, dialogue that challenged me to think more deeply and consider more broadly. Finally, I share this accomplishment fully with my wife, Lynn, and my two boys, Keaghan and Reid. Every day you keep me centere...