Diversity in students’ personal networks : an egocentric network analysis of diversity’s role in student thriving.

Racial and ethnic diversity has previously been linked with a multitude of positive benefits in business, K-12 education, higher education, and in communities. Additionally, The Thriving Quotient is a mechanism for better understanding student success and wellbeing from a psychological perspective. The Thriving Quotient is comprised of five subscales: academic determination, engaged learning, social connectedness, diverse citizenship, and positive perspective. The present research used social network analysis to study how the network diversity of students may play a role in students’ psychological thriving outcomes. Findings found that, while racial and ethnic diversity of students’ networks is not predictive of thriving, the subscales of thriving are predictive of network homophily and heterogeneity.