Does joining to groups or Facebook pages help students' retention within the first university year?

Using observational data, the aim of this paper is to investigate whether university students’ dropout within the first year is influenced by participation into groups or Facebook pages run by other students. Specifically, in this study such participation is considered a treatment condition and represents an extensive concept of student engagement, which can promote or strengthen social relationships among students. Given non-random treatment assignment, analysis was carried out by using propensity score matching in order to correct for selection bias due to a set of observable pre-treatment variables. Several matching techniques are used and the results were compared. Survey data were collected on a sample of students enrolled in a large Italian university.