Buffie Longmire-Avital, an assistant professor of psychology, and Cherrel Miller-Dyce, an assistant professor of education, conducted a secondary data analysis to explore potential factors that contributed to the perceived social status held by students attending a historically black university.
Longmire-Avital and Miller-Dyce were particularly interested in how black first generation students constructed their social status in comparison to black students whose parents were college graduates. This secondary analysis was performed on data collected from Longmire-Avital’s previous work that explored relationships among racial identity, social class, and psychological well-being for black collegiate emerging adults.
The first generation students in the sample tended to use their academic performance and their evaluative perception of that performance to inform their social position within the college’s social community. Non-first generation students used more social indicators, such as their self-esteem for appearance and perceived sociability, to inform their position. The article discusses why first-generation students relied on tangible forms of capital to infer status, whereas non-first generation students used more intangible forms of capital.
The article citation is listed below:
Longmire-Avital, B. & Miller-Dyce, C. (2015). Factors related to perceived status in the campus community for first generation students at an HBCU. College Student Journal, 49 (3) 375-386.