| Using daily activity logs and in-depth interviews to capture student discourse on their college lives and political perspectives, the dissertation uses a formal analytic method to derive distinct student identity groups. The following questions are addressed: What constitutes student identities? How are race, ethnicity, class, and gender relevant to understanding students' identities? Is there a unique generational student identity? Five college life identity groups emerged from the analysis: Low College Involvement-Social Capital Orientation, Low College Involvement-Academic Orientation, Medium College Involvement-Academic Orientation, Medium College Involvement-Social Capital Orientation, and High College Involvement-Social Capital Orientation. Five student political identity groups are discussed as well: Social Conservative, Cultural Conservative, Cultural Moderate, Social Moderate, and Social/Cultural Liberal. Differences between these two sets of groups can be explained, in part, by an "identity capital scale." Conceptually, identity capital is a model to explain differences in student groups taking into account their combined race, ethnicity, gender, and class compositions and depicting these in terms of an identity-based hierarchy. In addition to identity capital differences among students, a common or generational identity is presented that transcends differences in race, ethnicity, gender and class. |
