Associations of Civic Attitudes in Service-Learning

Service-learning is an effective method of increasing citizenship participation and civic responsibility by incorporating community service activities into academic coursework. This study used survey research to examine the civic attitude scores of service-learning students at a large, public, mid-Atlantic state university. The research questions provided information on the association between students who perform written and verbal reflection activities (outside of class and in-class) and their civic attitude, broken down by gender, class year, and grade point average. The association between interest in future service participation and civic attitudes were also examined. The data were collected with the Service-Learning Participant Profile (pre-test) and the Service-Learning Evaluation (post-test). Cross-tabulation procedures and chi-square tests were used to analyze the data. It was found that students who performed discussion reflection activities outside of class had higher civic attitude levels and more interest in future service participation.