Why Involvement Matters: A Review of Research on Student Involvement in the Collegiate Setting.

Research reveals that student involvement on college campuses impacts student development and student learning. This review highlights different types of student involvement, summarizes key findings, and identifies significant gaps in the research. The implication of the findings suggests that student affairs administrators need to continue the exploration on the importance of college student involvement. The growing body of literature and research examining student involvement addresses the fundamental question: "In what ways and to what degree does the experience of attending college promote change in students? " (Love, 1995, p. 162). The impact college attendance has on students' development in areas such as cognition (King & Kitchener, 1994), moral reasoning (Rest, 1986a; 1986b), and identity (Chickering & Reisser, 1993) have been explored. Changes in attitudes (Astin, Parrott, Korn, & Sax, 1997), career choices (Luzzo, McWhirter, & Hutcheson, 1997), and levels of knowledge (Rabinowitz & Glaser, 1985) have also been researched, along with issues of retention and matriculation (Tinto, 1993). Exactly which areas of student involvement have the greatest impact on student development and student learning and which specific campus services and/or programs influence a student to become involved are questions which serve as the focus for this article. In a general sense, several researchers have come to agree that personal development is accomplished through student involvement (Kuh, Schuh, Whitt, & Associates, 1991). Specifically, the resounding theme in the student affairs literature is that student involvement at the collegiate level does impact student development and learning. In other words, when students become involved with their collegiate environment, students develop and learn outside the classroom. More concretely, Alexander Astin's "theory of involvement" states that "students learn by becoming involved" (p. 36). According to Astin, there is a direct correlation between student involvement and student development. His theory of student involvement is helpful in illustrating the term. Astin gives five "basic postulates" that characterize involvement: (a) mental and physical energy must be invested in "objects" (i.e., activities, tasks, people), (b) involvement is a continuous concept--with different amounts of energy applied by different students to different tasks, (c) involvement has both qualitative and quantitative characteristics, (d) the amount of development and learning is directly proportional to the quantity and quality of involvement, and (e) the effectiveness of any practice or policy is related to its capacity to encourage student involvement (pps. 35-36). These postulates provide a framework for examining student involvement and serve as a guideline from which to study involvement and its effects. The question of does college student involvement matter seems a simple one to answer given the plethora of studies conducted during the last few decades (Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991) and given the fact that several studies conducted after 1990 indicate that there is a continuing trend to support the importance of college student involvement on overall student development and learning. However, the question now for student affairs administrators focuses on which areas of student involvement matter. A review of the recent literature on student involvement clarifies that student involvement impacts the collegiate experience. However, the differences in the studies reveal that different types of student involvement may influence the learning and development experiences differently. This is a critical, albeit obvious, disclosure as student affairs administrators begin to focus on the establishment of learning and personal development objectives in program design and assessment. It becomes important to acknowledge what research reveals so student affairs professionals can be aware of both intentional outcomes of student involvement, as well as anticipate some unintended outcomes of student involvement. …