research - Associated Student Government, Northwestern University

RESEARCHlearning significantly increased on civic action, whilestudents in the traditional classroom setting did not.Moreover, female students scored “higher than malestudents on the Civic Action scale in two samples, aftercontrolling for Social Desirability.” (Moely, Mercer et al.,2002)IV. Data & AnalysisA. Descriptive Statistics(1) General DistributionsFigure 1 is a comprehensive motive distributionacross the four organizational categories surveyed.While, it is very accurate in describing motives, it isdifficult to generalize, due to the specificity of the organizations.Our sample population being 44 studentsis significant considering that the entire population atNorthwestern University is around 8000 students, makingour sample 0.55% of the population, yet this doesnot represent percent of the civically engagement population,just the overall student body. However, when furthercategorized between organizations, the sample sizebecomes so small that our results may have anomalies.Specifically two data sets, attraction to public policy inregards to ASB-Environmental and self-sacrifice in regardsto ASB-Non-environmental, diverged significantlyfrom the norm. We cannot make a generalization onthis data, so instead we further analyzed it through aggregateunderstandings, so we could effectively compareVES vs. VS.Figure 2 has a few interesting data trends. First, foreach of the categorizes surveyed, VES was found to havehigher or exactly even motive levels to that of the VSsurvey group of individuals. Particularly note worthywere the extreme deviations in regards to the attractionto public policy aggregate. This increase can partiallybe accounted for by the observations in Figure 1, thatthe ASB-Environmental group had particularly highattraction to public policy. Further, it appears that theself-sacrifice aggregate is overall higher for those whotake part in service that is of environmental themes.Finally, the Northwestern University students who weresurveyed have resulted in near identical indications oftheir civic action returns in addition to their compassionlevels. We believe that the civic action return ratesare so similar due to the nature of Northwestern Universitystudents, in addition to how the service is inherentlycompleted. This indicates that the type of servicewhich is completed does not necessarily correlate withthe return levels, but instead that individuals are morelikely to return based on what they personally gain fromthe service experience.(2) SexIn regards to sex, the significant statistical deviationsas seen in Figure 3 were compassion and self-sacrifice.We believe that these results represent broader differencesin sex. Furthermore, seeing that the deviationsin both motives are similar for sex, we investigated therelationship between compassion and self-sacrifice.R-squared value of 0.32, meaning that there is someco-linearity between these two variables, which is notsurprising considering that those who are willing to selfsacrificemight have developed a large degree of empathy,which can coincide with compassion.(3) CommunityIn terms of community background, Figure 4 showsstudents who identified with an urban upraising weremore likely to be attracted to public policy making,while those from suburban backgrounds preferred commitmentto public interest. We assume this to be thecase because of the interactions a given student mayhave encountered throughout their upbringing. Specificallyand dense urban areas, politics and political activ-Figure 1: Motive DistributionFigure 2: Motive Distribution VES vs. VSVOLUME 7, 2011-2012NORTHWESTERN UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH JOURNAL67