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How University Websites’ Emphasis on Age Diversity Influences Prospective Students’ Perception of Person-Organization Fit and Student Recruitment

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Abstract

Despite of the popularity of emphasizing diversity information on university websites surprisingly little is known about if how and why diversity recruitment strategies actually affect students’ enrollment decisions. To gain insight into this question this paper introduces and tests a model applying general social psychological theorizing to the relationships that older university applicants may form with a potential future university. Study 1 (N = 172), a web-based scenario experiment, confirmed the model’s assumption that emphasizing diversity in terms of students’ age increases perceived person-organization fit through consolidating anticipation of organization-based respect and pride. Study 2 (N = 195), a naturalistic field study among actual university applicants, replicated this mediational model. Importantly, including alternative predictors of applicants’ enrollment decisions in the model (e.g., personal goals for studying) did not change this picture. An additional follow-up after 3 months (N = 62) also secured evidence for the proposed model’s predictive power with regard to participants’ actual enrollment. Practical and theoretical implications of these findings for university recruitment strategies are discussed.

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Notes

  1. We replicated this preponderance of “null-effects” in a set of additional moderation analyses in which we used contrast coded variables for three age groups (25 years and younger, 26–39 years, 40 years and older) rather than the continuous age variable as the critical moderator. In this analyses, 1 of the total 15 comparisons received a marginally significant interaction: Relative to the group of older students (40 years and older), among younger students (25 years and younger) the diversity climate manipulation had a somewhat weaker effect on perceived diversity climate, t(44) = 1.70, p = .096, for all other contrasts, all ts ≤ |−1.58|, ps ≥ .10.

  2. Following Study 1’s procedure we also conducted additional moderation analyses in which we used contrast coded variables for three age groups (25 years and younger, 26–39 years, 40 years and older) as the critical moderator. None of the total 12 comparisons received a significant interaction, ts ≤ |−1.47|, ps ≥ .14.

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Acknowledgments

This research was made possible by a grant from the Ministry of Innovation, Science, Research and Technology of North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) to the FernUniversitat in Hagen (Principal investigator: Stefan Stürmer). We are grateful to Heide Schmidtmann, Jana Darnstädt and Julia Kreimeyer from the Institutional Research and Quality Monitoring Office of the FernUniversität for their assistance in carrying out this research.

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  1. Institut für Psychologie, FernUniversität in Hagen, Universitätsstr. 33, 58097, Hagen, Germany

    Toni A. Ihme, Katharina Sonnenberg, Maria-Luisa Barbarino, Björn Fisseler & Stefan Stürmer

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  1. Toni A. Ihme
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  2. Katharina Sonnenberg
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  3. Maria-Luisa Barbarino
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Katharina Sonnenberg, Maria-Luisa Barbarino, Björn Fisseler, Stefan Stürmer, and Toni A. Ihme have no interests that might be interpreted as influencing the research and APA ethical standards were followed in the conduct of the study. There are no potential conflicts of interest.

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Appendix

Appendix

See Table 4.

Table 4 Items and factor loadings for the perceived diversity climate scale (FI), the anticipated respect scale (FII), the anticipated pride scale (FIII) and the anticipated P-O fit scale (FIV) (PCA, Varimax-rotation)
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Ihme, T.A., Sonnenberg, K., Barbarino, ML. et al. How University Websites’ Emphasis on Age Diversity Influences Prospective Students’ Perception of Person-Organization Fit and Student Recruitment. Res High Educ 57, 1010–1030 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-016-9415-1

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