Impact of high school extracurricular participation on a cadet's initial person -organization fit with the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps program

The study examined the relationship between a student's extracurricular participation in his/her last 2 years of high school to his/her person-organization fit with AFROTC's culture. The construct was that extracurricular participation enhanced a student's values and leadership skills that were representative of AFROTC's culture and core competency. The new cadet who possessed these representative values and skills would then experience a good initial value congruence and person-organization fit with the AFROTC culture. Retention past the first semester would measure this initial fit.;This study examined the following research questions: (1) Is there a correlation between a new cadet's extracurricular participation and person-organization fit to AFROTC as measured by retention after the first semester? (2) Can the predictive power of the patterns of extracurricular participation be improved by weighting participation and achievement in these extracurricular activities according to their (a) similarity to AFROTC, (b) means values consistency with the AFROTC means values, and (c) ends value consistency with the AFROTC ends value?;The data supported statistically significant, but very small, relationships between the average participation and achievement scores and person-organization fit as measured by AFROTC retention. There was no statistically significant support for the total participation and achievement scores and person-organization fit. The application of similarity means values and ends value indices did not strengthen the relationship between extracurricular participation and person-organization fit with AFROTC.