This research project will examine patterns of social participation and their relationship to outcomes in the areas of education, civic engagement and health. The investigators ask the following questions: how long do high school activities influence events in adulthood? How is the influence carried out? Do different types of participation produce different effects? Does participation affect everyone in the same ways? The investigators will apply a novel set of longitudinal panel data, the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS), to address these questions. The WLS data provide measures of social participation in high school, midlife and early retirement. The investigators will collect additional data for the sub-sample of the WLS participants (about 15%) who attended college in or near Wisconsin. These data will add significantly to the value of the proposed research, by informing questions about continuity of participation and mechanisms for explaining observed effects. Data collection activities will engage a team of graduate and undergraduate students and provide opportunities for a hands-on introduction to research. All new data collected using funds from this grant will eventually become available to other researchers through the public collection of data housed by the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. Results from the analyses will be disseminated through conference papers, academic publications and reports made to WLS participations. Social participation holds unique potential for addressing socioeconomic inequalities and health disparities because social participation levels are more easily changed than other influential factors, such as family background or occupational status. Therefore, understanding direct and indirect relationships with social participation supports efforts to uncover solutions for pressing issues of health and status inequalities. This study furthers such an agenda by considering the interrelationships between health, socioeconomic status, and social participation using novel panel data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study.
