Extra Activities Essay, Research Paper

The Research Problem I am focusing in on deals with how much of a positive or negative effect participating in extracurricular activities can benefit the participant. Ranging from academic achievement in high school and college to helping excel in job careers. This literature has been studied before but I am attempting to replicate this study in order to understand if this research is applicable to students participating in athletics. While examining this topic I found that involvement in extracurricular activities, mainly athletics, there were direct positive and negative effects that occurred.

In the first article I found titled Extracurricular Activities and Academic Achievement, the amount of participation in extracurricular activities was positively related to academic achievement. In this article analyses was performed separately for African Americans and white students, but in my research I am going to stick with students as a whole. In most cases academic achievement generalizes to increased achievement in extracurricular activities. Getting Involved and Getting Ahead: Extracurricular Participation and the Educational Attainment Process, deals with whether participation in the extra-curriculum has a positive effect on student’s plans for post-secondary education. Analyses show that involvement in other activities contributes significantly to student’s post-secondary plans and the step students take toward college enrollment.

To narrow down this broad topic this article, Getting Involved and Getting Ahead: Extracurricular Participation and the Educational Attainment Process, has findings that imply extracurricular involvement is as beneficial for students in low socioeconomic circumstances as it is if for middle and upper class students. Coming for a middle class home myself one of my main goals for partaking in extracurricular activities: such as football and track gave me the opportunity to work toward a scholarship for college. Having a sister and brother two years younger then I make it difficult for a middle-class home to afford tuition for college.

Involvement in pro-social activities is linked to positive educational trajectories and low rates of involvement in risky behavior. According to Student Council, Volunteering, Basketball, or Marching Band: What Kind of Extracurricular Involvement Matter?, besides having the opportunity to go to college by obtaining a scholarship, extracurricular participation allows students to associate themselves with positive peers interested in the same types of attitudes and goals. By having students the same age and interests reinforcing one anther to do right things it helps kids who aren’t as socially accepted.

From Idealism to Pragmatic Detachment: The Academic Performance of College Athletes concerns the relationship between athletic participation and academic performance among athletes involved in College sports. “Their athletic, social, and classroom experiences lead them to become progressively detached from academics.” Basically how these student-athletes abandon their earlier aspirations and expectations while giving themselves up to inferior academic performance.

Having done this research on students benefiting from extracurricular activities I want to see if athletic or pro-social extracurricular benefit students more then the other. In the last article found a negative result in partaking in extracurricular activity was an exposure to alcohol drinking. From a universal aspect I think that involvement overall has a more positive effect then negative, which I intend to focus most of my survey literature and research problem on.

Resource Used

Adler, Peter; Adler, Patricia., From Idealism to Pragmatic Detachment: The Academic

Performance of College Athletes, 1985

Eccles, Jacuelynne., Student Council, Volunteering, Basketball, or Marching Band: What Kind

of Extracurricular Involvement Matter?, 1999

Gerber, Susan., Extracurricular Activities and Academic Achievement, 1996

Power, Ann-Marie-Roney., Getting Involved and Getting Ahead: Extracurricular

Participation and the Educational Attainment Process, 1999