Where Do “Problem” Students Go After School? Concurrent Patterns of School Problem Behaviors and Extracurricular Participation

Background: School problem behaviors during adolescence are detrimental to educational outcomes, whereas extracurricular participation is associated with positive outcomes. Although students are likely to engage in both school problem behaviors and extracurricular activities, it remains unknown if and how patterns co-occur in these two areas. Documenting concurrent patterns can help identify both at-risk students as well as patterns of participation that might compensate or attenuate the effects of negative school behaviors.

Purpose: Utilizing baseline data from the nationally representative Educational Longitudinal Survey of 2002 (n=16,198), this study examined: (a) patterns of school problem behaviors (i.e., tardiness, absenteeism, truancy, disciplinary infractions, suspension), (b) patterns of extracurricular participation (i.e., sports, performance, school clubs, service work), and (c) combined patterns of school problem behaviors and extracurricular participation.    

Methods: First, patterns of school problem behaviors and extracurricular participation were identified using latent class analyses (LCA). Next, a second-order LCA was conducted to determine joint patterns of problem behaviors and extracurricular participation. All analyses were conditioned on race/ethnicity, gender, age, parental income and parental education.

Results: In the first-order LCA, four classes of problem behaviors were identified: (a) low-levels, (b) absent/truant, (c) highly-disciplined, and (d) high-risk. Separately, four classes of extracurricular participation were identified: (a) high-involvement, (b) athlete-performers, (c) moderate-involvement, and (d) low-involvement.

Second-order LCA identified members in all sixteen possible combinations. The largest frequencies fell in extreme categories. For example, among students with low levels of problem behaviors, 65% were involved in extracurriculars at moderate to high levels; of the students with highest levels of problem behaviors, only 6% were involved. However, among the students with profiles of absent/truant or highly-disciplined, over 62% were still participating in extracurricular activities at moderate to high levels.

Implications: Our study observed intriguing patterns of problem behaviors and extracurricular activities. As was hypothesized, students with the lowest problem levels of problem behaviors were most involved in extracurricular activities, while those with the highest levels were least involved. However, counter to hypotheses, most students with absent-truant or highly-disciplined profiles also had profiles of medium to high participation – at levels nearly equal to those with low problem behaviors.

Findings have strong implications for school social workers and professionals who work with multi-problem youth. The results highlight the importance of recognizing patterns of school problem behaviors, and how extracurricular participation may interact with negative school behaviors. For example, professionals may encourage high-risk youths to participate in an array of organized activities. Future research should also examine differences in educational outcomes (e.g., grades, graduation rates) between these groups. Such knowledge might produce additional implications for practice and policy on extracurricular activities and school discipline. 

Finally, this study models the feasibility and utility of person-oriented analyses in social work and educational research. Our findings identify concurrent patterns of problem behaviors and extracurricular participation previously undocumented in the literature. Such patterns were only identifiable through person-oriented analyses. To best guide policy and practice, research must examine not only the relationships between variables, but also the patterns of behaviors that exist amongst at-risk populations.