Hope and Obstacles in Black College Students

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

• Hope and Obstacles in Black College Students
• Laila I. McCloud (bio) and Eugene T. Parker III (bio)

Scholars have documented the ways that Black collegians engage with and are impacted by personal, academic, and societal obstacles (Beasley & McClain, 2021; Salami et al., 2021). Accordingly, there is an increased need for additional exploration into how Black college students navigate these obstacles (Williams et al., 2020). Black people have been actively engaged in US higher education for over a century, and it is important to highlight traits that promote positive outcomes, particularly psychological constructs (Danoff-Burg et al., 2004; Kolluri & Tichavakunda, 2022). Thus, there is a need for continued research on obstacles in college environments and particular traits (e.g., hope) in Black students.

Snyder (1995) defined hope as "the process of thinking about one's goals, along with the motivation to move toward those goals (agency), and the ways to achieve those goals (pathways)" (p. 355). Given the mental and psychological development associated with pursuing postsecondary education, hope has emerged as a positive psychological trait for student success (Duncan-Andrade, 2009; Gallagher et al., 2017). A few studies have explored the influence of hope in relation to the retention of first-year undergraduates (Bryce et al., 2021), on-campus support networks (D'Amico Gutherie & Fruiht, 2020), and veteran adjustment to college life (Umucu et al., 2020). Studies specifically investigating hope and Black students have focused on experiences with discrimination (Banks et al., 2008; Danoff-Burg et al., 2004; McDermott et al., 2020). The purpose of this study was to expand the conversation about additional ways that Black students engage hope to persist in their collegiate experience.

The COVID-19 pandemic, intertwined with state-sanctioned antiblack violence, led to a disruption in educational plans and to inconsistent institutional support for many college students (Anand & Hsu, 2020; Liu, 2021; Martinez et al., 2022). We have been reminded that college campuses are not immune to the side effects of racialized inequities that the pandemic has emphasized (Harper, 2020). As the US moves to a new phase of responding to a variety of compounding societal and health crises that disproportionately impact Black people, there is an opportunity to explore how Black college students respond to obstacles and persist in meeting their goals. This study centered on the psychological construct of hope in Black college students, particularly dimensions of hope agency and hope pathways. We used Snyder's (2005) hope theory to operationalize our conceptualization and interpretation of the study results. For this study, the students' goals related to overcoming academic or financial obstacles were identified as hope agency, and their plan for meeting those goals was identified as hope pathway. (Snyder, 2005). Hope requires a reciprocal relationship between pathways and [End Page 107] agency. The following research question guided this study: For Black students, what is the relationship between hope agency and hope pathways and educational and financial obstacles?

METHODS

We used data from the 2021 administration of the Multi-Institutional Study of Leadership (MSL, 2023), a national survey examining undergraduate students' pre-college and collegiate experiences that promote leadership outcomes. This data source was selected because of its large and diverse sample and how it connects hope pathways and hope agency as an important component of leadership development. One of the aims of US higher education is to develop generations of ethical citizens and leaders. The MSL provides a unique opportunity to understand how Black students engage and sustain hope in relationship to their development as leaders.

The overall participant sample for the MSL administration of the survey included 33,362 students. A review for missing data revealed that most of the included variables comprised 2% or less missing data on the key variables of interest. We employed listwise deletion to remove cases with missing data. Subsequently, the analytic sample for this study comprised 1,273 participants who self-identified as Black. Additionally, the sample comprised students who identified as the following: 73% female (vs. male), 26% not heterosexual (vs. heterosexual), 20% first-generation students (vs. not first-generation status), and 67% working or middle class.

Aligning with previous research that has shifted toward asset-based frames for investigating the strengths of students (Kolluri...