Methodological Appendix

Students, their families, and others who have a hand in their college success are prioritized as the audience for this book; therefore, the research methods have largely been rendered invisible to the reader. For those interested in how the data was collected and analyzed, and the validity of the claims made, I offer this brief methodological appendix. In it I discuss the sample, data collection, and methods used to study not just the factors affecting the persistence of Black and Latinx college students, but also their making of meaning along the journey. In addition to the objective aspects of the study, I outline the primary analytic decisions and the collaborative process that led to the findings reported in this book.

The findings presented here emerged from the sequential narrowing of issues discussed in the research literature, news media, and among the cohort of Latinx and Black students interviewed. First, as discussed in the introduction, we zeroed in on college persistence because of the current centrality of obtaining a college degree for the future financial stability of American youth, particularly Black and Latinx Americans. Second, the focus is on Black and Latinx students because the majority of them who enroll in college, taking on substantial loans to do so, won’t obtain their degree, making college a high-risk, high-reward venture. Third, issues of academic preparation are backgrounded for three reasons: (1) based on their SAT and ACT scores, the ability of these students to do college-level work is not an issue for the sample recruited, (2) being academically prepared for college is necessary but not sufficient, and (3) we have limited understanding of the nonacademic barriers to graduation. Lastly, how Black and Latinx students’ many social identities are marginalized and minoritized on college campuses is foregrounded because it is an often-discussed but under-researched barrier to persistence.

The following process was used to ensure that this collectively authored book was written with one voice. First, all coauthors interviewed participants and/or transcribed interviews and coded transcripts, so all were very familiar with the content of the conversations. Second, two research articles, one on identity and one on counterspaces,¹ and two op-eds, one against and one for campus counterspaces,² were read by all coauthors before they began analyzing the data. Third, all coauthors contributed to a collective online mind-mapping of how the framing issues, listed above, related to what participants discussed in their end-of-first-year interview. Fourth, I collaborated with each coauthor to identify the central focus of each chapter. Fifth, each coauthor identified one transcript that illustrated the focal issue to be examined in their chapter, then all coauthors reviewed the full list of focal transcripts to prepare for a two-day retreat. Sixth, during the two-day retreat all coauthors spent one hour collectively discussing each chapter. This was followed by me writing the introductory chapter that outlined the student persistence problem, and the second chapter that framed the centrality of identity for Latinx and Black students attending historically White colleges and universities. Lastly, all coauthors engaged in a collective review of these two chapters before beginning the process of coauthoring each subsequent chapter.

Sample

The Minority College Cohort study included seven waves of survey data collection between September 2013 and October 2017, and four waves of interviews between July 2014 and August 2018. This study tracked a sample of Latinx and Black young adults who graduated from high school and enrolled at historically White universities in the fall of 2013, with high expectations of obtaining at least a bachelor’s degree. Of the full sample of 533 participants, on a scale from zero to 100 percent, they averaged a 92 percent confidence that they would obtain their bachelor’s degree, and a 78 percent confidence that they would obtain a graduate degree. Based on the final survey, approximately 50 percent had obtained a bachelor’s degree within four years of graduating from high school, and an additional 32 percent were still enrolled as full-time students.

Participants were recruited in the fall of their first year of college, approximately two months after the academic year began at their respective schools. Administrators associated with the registrar’s office at each university sent two recruitment emails, approximately two weeks apart, containing a description of the research study and a link to the online survey. Across the five universities, the proportion of Black undergraduates ranged from 3 percent to 18 percent, with a mean of 8 percent; the proportion of Latinx undergraduates ranged from 9 percent to 25 percent, with a mean of 16 percent.

The recruitment email was sent to students who met the inclusion criteria: full-time, first-time, first-year students who self-identified on their college application as either African American / Black or Hispanic / Latina / Latino. Approximately 35 percent of participants who responded and consented to participate in the study were enrolled at Urban PublicU, 28 percent at Rural StateU, 24 percent at one of the two Urban PrivateUs, and 13 percent at Suburban StateU. The mean age at recruitment was eighteen years old, and 48 percent of Black and 69 percent of Latinx participants were first-generation college students. Only 25 percent of Black and 43 percent of Latinx participants are men. This is despite extending the enrollment period for men beyond the dates listed in the recruitment emails. As noted in the introduction, this gender gap is reflective of the current gender imbalance in college enrollment in the US.³

The recruited sample was 41 percent Black and 59 percent Latinx. Participants were asked to identify their ancestral and/or country of ethnic origin and could select “American,” specify something not on the list, or select “none” as their ethnic origin. The ethnic composition of Black participants was 84 percent African American, 6 percent African, 2 percent Caribbean, and 9 percent multiracial. The ethnic composition of Latinx participants was 68 percent Mexican, 8 percent Puerto Rican, 5 percent South American, 2 percent Central American, 2 percent Dominican, 1 percent Cuban, 4 percent Other Latinx, and 9 percent multiracial. Only 8 percent of participants were foreign-born; 25 percent of Black and 81 percent of Latinx participants had at least one foreign-born parent.

Participants graduated from 255 different high schools; over 85 percent were public high schools located in the Chicago metropolitan region. Participants’ high schools spanned the full range of student racial-ethnic diversity compositions. Specifically, 24 percent of Latinx and 32 percent of Black participants attended predominantly same-race ethnicity schools (their racial-ethnic group was 70 percent or more of the student body), and 20 percent of Latinx and 10 percent of Black participants attended predominantly White schools (White students were 70 percent or more of the student body).

The Survey

Before we began participant recruitment, we had a collective meeting with at least one administrator from each of the five participating universities. Each administrator had a role in “minority” or “diversity” student support services. This was an important part of establishing the institutional relationships needed to ensure that our recruitment emails would be sent out by each institution’s registrar’s office. This meeting was also used to review and revise the planned survey and identify additional survey topics. The additional topics that resulted from this meeting focused on financial, academic, emotional help-seeking expectations, actions, and experiences, particularly in relation to seeking support from institutional agents in high school and college. These topics emerged from administrators’ discussions about one of their biggest frustrations: students who wait until it is too late to seek support, particularly students who left college because of problems that could have been resolved or minimized had they been more open to seeking and expecting institutional responsiveness to their needs. The survey took about forty-five minutes to complete and also included the following topics:

1. Postsecondary aspirations and expectations
2. Career aspirations and expectations
3. College preparation and planning experiences and supports during high school
4. Social network and social support from family, peers, and other adult mentors
5. Risk-taking behaviors and health and well-being during high school
6. High school curricular and cocurricular experiences and achievements
7. Mental health: anxiety, depression, and stress scales
8. School-based racial and ethnic microaggressions and discrimination scales
9. Racial-ethnic identity scales
10. Civic engagement and political activism scales
11. Romantic relationship experiences
12. Student debt and financial distress

This formed the base survey, with question wording updated at each wave of data collection.

A total of seven waves of survey data were collected: Wave 1 (September to October), Wave 2 (January to February), and Wave 3 (June to July) of participants’ first year post-high-school graduation; Wave 4 (September to October) and Wave 5 (June to July) of participants’ second year post-high-school graduation; Wave 6 (June to July) of participants’ fourth year post-high-school graduation; and Wave 7 (July to September) of participants’ fifth year post-high-school graduation. Wave 7 had an extended data collection window to ensure the highest possible final response rate. The response rates for Waves 2 through 6 were above 90 percent, and the final response rate for Wave 7 was 87 percent. This is a high response rate for a five-year longitudinal study that provided only a twenty-five-dollar Amazon.com gift card for each completed survey, increased to thirty-five dollars for the final survey. Though small, the incentive was meaningful for participants, and many emailed a thank you at each wave. When the study was over, one participant emailed that he would remember this study as buying the backpacks that he had through college. During the year in which data collection was paused, participants’ third year post-high-school graduation, we sent e-cards for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Valentine’s Day.

After data collection was concluded, many participants emailed that they would miss being asked about their experiences and opinions. At initial recruitment and at each wave of data collection, we framed the need for their participation in ways that centered the importance of including their experiences and voices in the decision making about policies that would affect the students coming behind them. I believe that this contributed to the high response rate. The high response rate was also because a substantial number of the survey questions asked identity- relevant questions and asked not just about their experiences, but also how they felt about those experiences.

After the final wave of data collection, all participants received one final emailed question: “Please tell us about how participating in this study affected your thoughts, feelings, and any other way that participating may have affected you.” The primary response was that completing the surveys gave them an opportunity to reflect on their experiences and “brought out good memories and bad memories.” The second-most-frequent response was that the surveys were also opportunities to process their emotions about their life experiences: “I distinctly remember exactly how I was feeling each time I filled out the survey. Observing my emotions in retrospect have allowed me to firmly grasp my personal triumphs and tribulations.”

The Interviews

A phenomenological framework undergirded the qualitative aspects of this study.⁴ Under this framework the researcher identifies the phenomenon to be understood and then seeks to unpack the diversity of experiences associated with that phenomenon. To gain a phenomenological understanding, researchers must first familiarize themselves with each interviewee’s experiences of the phenomenon and then their meaning-making about those experiences. We focused on participants’ understandings of themselves during the transition to adulthood, and for most this centered on how their college campus experiences mediated their understandings of themselves, their future, and American society as they transitioned to independent adulthood.

Stratified random sampling was used to select the interview subsample. The sample was stratified by race-ethnicity, gender, and financial distress. Because financial factors figure prominently in determining college persistence and it was a substantial issue for most of our participants, the subsample was stratified by low, medium, and high financial distress at the start of college. Financial distress was the average of three survey items: (1) how much difficulty, if any, are you having paying your bills? (2) how upset or worried are you because you do not have enough money to pay for things? and (3) how concerned do your current financial conditions make you about the chances you can afford to complete your college degree?

The stratification by race-ethnicity, gender, and financial distress resulted in twelve mutually exclusive categories (see table 1 below). Random sampling with replacement was used until we reached the quota of six participants for each category. For the initial establishment of the interview subgroup we waited one week after sending the final interview request reminder email before categorizing prospective participants as unresponsive and replacing them with another randomly selected participant. We had substantial difficulty recruiting Black men with moderate and high financial distress into the interview subsample, so we oversampled Black men with low financial distress.

The first interview was completed during July and August of 2014, the first summer after participants enrolled in college. Interviewees were then invited to complete follow-up interviews during July and August of 2015, 2016, and 2018. Each interview lasted one to two hours, and participants received thirty-five dollars for each interview. The first interview was done in person with all but sixteen participants who were not residing within driving distance of Chicago.

The primary goals of the first interview were to (1) obtain retrospective information about their process of deciding to enroll in college, (2) learn about many aspects of their transition and adjustment experiences, (3) explore issues associated with the financial costs of college and understand its role in persistence, and (4) build a trusting connection that would facilitate future interviews, which would be conducted by phone. Given these goals, semi-structured interviews were used. Semi-structured interviews combine the systematization of an ordered set of questions with the flexibility for the interviewer to deviate from the question order and add questions.⁵ This is the best method for ensuring that a base set of questions are asked of all interviewees while creating a conversation-like experience and enabling the interviewer to explore unanticipated topics.

Table 1 Number of participants interviewed in each stratification category

The interview protocol (questions, probes, and transition statements) for the first interview was developed using the following process. First, I drafted the initial protocol based on a very preliminary analysis of the first three waves of survey data. Second, the two postdoctoral co-investigators edited the protocol and added questions based on their research foci (within-racial-ethnic group cultural insults such as being accused of acting White, and engagement in extracurricular, civic, and political activities). Third, the interview protocol was tested with a few undergraduates at my university and then revised. Fourth, once trained, interviewers conducted one to two interviews with study participants and then met to discuss and review the interview protocol.

The interview protocol began with chronological questions about high school experiences, including preparing for and applying to college. We then asked about the transition to college, including managing independence and academic demands; interpersonal interactions with peers, professors, and administrators; and participation in extracurricular activities. The interviews then moved to discussing adjustment issues that would be particularly salient for Black and Latinx students attending historically White colleges and universities, such as racial-ethnic interactions and microaggressions. We also asked broad questions to determine what interviewees perceived to be the most positive and negative aspects of their transition to college. The last major block of questions asked about financial factors, college persistence, and career aspirations. We then closed by asking about advice they would give to college administrators and to other students like themselves.

This interview protocol served as the base protocol for all follow-up interview protocols, with the removal of retrospective questions about high school. The second follow-up interview included questions about racial-ethnic injustice and immigration in America, with a focus on Black Lives Matter and DACA activism. The third follow-up interview included questions that asked participants to detail one personal incident of racial-ethnic stereotyping. The final follow-up interview included questions that asked them to broadly reflect on their life experiences during the five years since graduating from high school. All follow-up interview protocols included branching questions for participants who were not enrolled in school during the preceding six months. The following topics were included for participants not enrolled in school: process of leaving college, current employment and career aspirations, student debt, and aspirations and plans for re-enrolling in college.

A team of Black male and female and Latinx female graduate students and postdoctoral scholars conducted the interviews. Interviewees and interviewers were matched on race-ethnicity and gender, except Latinx male interviewees, who were interviewed by Black male interviewers. As interviewing proceeded, the two co-investigators periodically reviewed interview tapes and provided interviewers with helpful feedback.

The interviews proved to be an invaluable tool in four major ways. First, they provided detailed data on participants’ varied experiences and perceptions of those experiences, particularly regarding their campus social interactions and meaning-making about those interactions. Second, the interviews enabled us to examine ambiguous concepts that we asked participants to define for themselves in their answers to the questions. For example, participants were asked to describe how their first year was different from what they expected. Third, interviews provided opportunities for participants to indicate not just whether they had a particular type of experience but also detail a specific story illustrating the experience and their perception of it. For example, participants were asked to tell us about any personally stressful racial-ethnic experiences they had in a given year, and elaborate on what the other person(s) did, what the participant did, and how it made them feel. Lastly, the interviews allowed us to examine the experiential, attitudinal, and perceptual factors underlying quantitative findings from the surveys.

Analysis of Interview Data

Transcribed interviews were coded by a team of trained coders using Dedoose qualitative analysis software. Initial coding focused on identifying broad thematic codes that emerged inductively from the transcripts and deductively based on primary themes used to develop the interview protocol. The thematic codes that would be applied to all transcripts were determined through an iterative process in which all coders individually coded the same set of randomly selected transcripts and then collectively discussed their findings with the aim of identifying a limited set of broad codes.⁶ Once an agreed-upon set of codes was established, all interviews were double coded using consensus coding. Once the first randomly assigned coder completed coding the transcript, the second randomly assigned coder reviewed the transcript and flagged coding disagreements. Both coders then met to resolve coding disputes, which could be resolved by agreeing on a single code or agreeing on adding multiples codes to a segment of text. The following thematic codes were applied to all transcripts:

1. College-going support
   1. Support from family
   2. Support from friends
   3. Support from high school teachers and administrators
   4. Support from university professors and administrators
   5. Other support
2. Reasons for going to college
3. First-year transition and adjustment
   1. College adjustment experiences
   2. Campus racial-ethnic interactions
4. Stress
   1. Family stress
   2. Roommate, peer, friend stress
   3. Coping
   4. Other stress
5. Finances
   1. College financial planning and understanding
   2. Financial stress
   3. Work and employment
   4. Other finances
6. Romantic relationships
7. Racial-ethnic and immigration societal and political issues
8. Most positive experience this past year
9. Advice offered to university administrators
10. Advice offered to other students

Each coauthored chapter used the following sequential data analysis process. First, a limited number of the most relevant thematic codes were identified based on the focus on the chapter. Second, all excerpts of each code were examined to determine the associations and patterns that best explain the phenomenon being studied.⁷ Third, demographic characteristics of the cases were examined to determine whether the phenomenological associations and patterns were particular to various subgroups.⁸

Rigor, Reliability, and Trustworthiness

I believe that the steps and processes detailed in this methodological appendix resulted in the collection, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of trustworthy findings.⁹ Beginning the process with trained interviewers who had completed their own undergraduate experiences only a few years earlier and also matched participants in race-ethnicity and gender (matched by gender for Latinx Men) resulted in conversational interviews and data that was highly contextualized with information about how participants made meaning of their experiences. The process of having the transcripts double coded by eleven coders with varied gender, racial-ethnic and socioeconomic status, and immigrant histories resulted in reliable and valid first-stage thematic coding of the data. The collective process of analyzing and interpreting the coded data for each chapter resulted in a nuanced understanding of the many ways that identity structures Back and Latinx students’ transition and adjustment to historically White universities. Lastly, the coauthoring of chapters allowed for thick and rich descriptions that are accurate representations of participants’ experiences and their meaning-making of those experiences.