The Hispanic population in the United States has been increasing, which is affecting the number of Hispanic student population in the higher education. In spite of the rapid increase of Hispanic student population, little empirical research has been conducted on the Hispanic student’s college success. This study investigated the effect of participating in holistic undergraduate research programs on retention outcome of Hispanic students at The University of New Mexico. UNM is a public Hispanic-Serving Institution where 47.3 percent of undergraduate students are Hispanic in 2016.
The Vincent Tinto’s theory of student departure and the five critical factors of retention developed by Demetrious and Schmitz-Sciborski were used as the framework of the research model. The predictor variables included demographic characteristics, academic attributes, and research participation, and the dependent variable was the retention outcome. Propensity score matching was used to remove the concern of multicollinearity. The retention outcomes of two groups, Hispanic students who participated in research programs and who did not participate, were compared. The results indicated that research participation had a statistically significant positive effect on student’s retention outcome
