Research Project Summary
One such population that is of particular vulnerability to poor financial health and literacy is first generation undergraduate students, who are often coming from economically disadvantaged families. One method to support these students is the Federal Work-Study (FWS) Program, however, FWS eligible students often do not accept the award due to lack of understanding of not only the benefits offered. This works against a first generation student to take full advantage of federal work study benefits that can not only support them financially in the present moment, but also help to aid them in future career development and personal development opportunities that can lead to fewer healthcare disparities later on in life. This project will focus on interviewing federal work-study eligible, first generation students enrolled at Rowan University, Rutgers University-Camden, and Stockton University, during the Summer of 2023. The purpose of these interviews is two-fold: First, to obtain baseline qualitative and narrative data to understand the understanding, viewpoints, beliefs, and conceptions that first generation students have in the Southern New Jersey region regarding FWS awards. The second purpose is to create a method of scholarly inquiry that can be shared throughout the region and beyond regarding assessing the public and population health impacts of first generation students’ choices to use or not use FWS awards.
Research Project Goals
The qualitative data that will be generated from this project will form a thematic report that shows how first generation students currently conceptualize the relationship between FWS awards and academic, professional, and personal success. Specific thematic analysis will be focused on whether students see these FWS opportunities as ways to improve their current and future health status, specifically regarding social determinants of health and health disparities. This data will be used to generate white paper reports that can be shared with the associated institutions participating in this study. To our knowledge, this would be the first assessment of its kind in the Southern New Jersey region. As such, the findings of this study will be disseminated across institutions of higher education in Southern New Jersey, as well as through high schools to be utilized by college readiness counselors who have direct contact with college-bound students. These findings can be utilized to create educational tools, college readiness workshops, and web-based FAQ information to aid students and their families to understand the ways in which FWS can impact their lives and address health disparities and social determinants of health that are related to financial security and literacy. In addition to educational programmatic development, these findings will generate a standardized qualitative interview instrument that can be shared with SJIPH as well as with other organizations and institutions in the field for their use in evaluating first generation students and their concepts related to FWS awards. This instrument, along with the associated findings, can be shared at local, state, and eventually national academic and scholarly conferences as way to generate best practices in exploring the relationship between student financial support and social determinants of health. These high impact practices can also be shared with EOF (a strictly NJ program) to provide best practice guidelines to institutions of higher education throughout the state. These white papers, tool development, qualitative findings, and other data gathered will be used to ultimately create a Best Practices/High Impact Practices Toolkit to be shared and promoted as an upstream way to assess what is working, what is not working, and what could be implemented to improve the current and future health status of first generation students both in the local region and throughout the larger region.
Research Project Objectives
- 1) Researchers will coordinate with the EOF Summer Program directors at each participating campus to find time during their summer program meetings to conduct the study interviews
- 2) Students who are participating in the EOF Summer Program of their respective campus will be invited to participate in a pre-screening questionnaire. This will be a quantitative screener to assess student mental and physical health status, as well as whether they participated in a pre-college program
- 3) Selected students (10 from each campus) will then participate in semi-directed focus group interviews during their EOF Summer Program for a 45-minute to 1-hour long focus group interview to provide the necessary qualitative data.