The Role of Social Class Identity: Implications for African American and White College Students' Psychological and Academic Outcomes.

Abstract

Social class plays an important role in the context of education. Divergent social class outcomes in higher education are often assumed to be a product of differences in access to material resources or academic preparation. However, social class can influence students’ academic outcomes through psychological pathways. What is less clear from current literature is how the psychological experience of social class may vary among individuals within a particular social class background. The purpose of this dissertation was to 1) present a conceptual framework for studying social class identity within the context of higher education, 2) establish the factor structure of a measure based on the theorized dimensions, 3) examine how students’ social class identity relates to variation in their psychological and academic experience of college, and 4) examine whether the relationship between social class identity and students’ psychological and academic outcomes are moderated by race and self-identified social class. Building from sociological and psychological literatures, the proposed multidimensional framework consists of three dimensions of social class identity: identification, centrality, and affect. The affective dimension was comprised of three sub-dimensions: pride, shame, and guilt. A survey was created to measure each dimension and was administered to a sample of 356 African American and White college students. The participants also completed measures of their academic and psychological adjustment outcomes. The factor structure of the measure was examined and found to be consistent with the theoretical framework. Using hierarchical OLS regressions, the relationship between social class identity beliefs and academic and psychological outcomes and the moderating effect of race and self-identified social class were examined. Controlling for objective indicators of SES, the findings demonstrate variation in the dimensions of social class identity among individuals from similar socioeconomic backgrounds and that this variation is predictive of students’ psychological and academic outcomes. The current study provides support for a multidimensional analysis of social class identity, and particularly the examination of different affective dimensions of collective identity. Additionally, this dissertation highlights the importance of examining how social class identity may differentially relate to students’ psychological and academic outcomes as a function of race.