Objective: The purpose of this study is to understand the relationship between organizational characteristics, state political climate, and student civic engagement at community colleges, operationalized in this article as student voting. Method: Utilizing a unique cross-sectional dataset compiled by the Institute for Democracy & Higher Education for the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections that merges student voting data, enrollment records from the National Student Clearinghouse, and institutional data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, we employed multi-level binary logistic regression to account for individual and organizational influences. Results: The relationship between voting and student characteristics aligns with national voting trends, in that students who are female, older, and White had higher odds of voting. However, there was one notable exception in 2012 where Black students had higher odds of voting than their White peers. We also found that students enrolled full-time and those enrolled at colleges in electoral battleground states were more likely to vote in 2012 and 2016. Weak or mixed relationships emerged between voting and environmental factors such as campaign spending, ballot initiatives, get-out-the-vote programs, restrictive voter laws, and compositional diversity of the student body. Conclusion: This study provides insight for community college leaders on potential ways to engage students in an effort to promote voter turnout in a presidential election year on their campuses. Specifically, we posit that institutions could highlight the salience of public policy issues for students, lobby for less restrictive voting laws, and implement evaluation programs of their civic engagement initiatives.

中文翻译：

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促进社区学院的民主参与：了解投票与学生、制度和环境因素之间的关系

目的：本研究的目的是了解社区学院的组织特征、州政治气候和学生公民参与之间的关系，在本文中作为学生投票进行操作。方法：利用民主与高等教育研究所为 2012 年和 2016 年总统选举编制的独特横截面数据集，该数据集合并了学生投票数据、国家学生信息交换所的入学记录以及综合高等教育数据系统的机构数据，我们采用多级二元逻辑回归来解释个人和组织的影响。结果：投票和学生特征之间的关系与全国投票趋势一致，因为女性、年长和白人学生的投票几率更高。然而，2012 年有一个值得注意的例外，黑人学生的投票率高于白人学生。我们还发现，在 2012 年和 2016 年，全日制学生和在选举战场州就读大学的学生更有可能投票。投票与环境因素（例如竞选支出、投票倡议、退出）之间出现了弱或混合的关系。投票计划、限制性选民法以及学生团体的组成多样性。结论：这项研究为社区大学领导者提供了有关让学生参与的潜在方式的见解，以提高他们校园总统选举年的选民投票率。具体来说，我们认为机构可以突出学生公共政策问题的突出性，游说限制性较低的投票法，