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Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine how student affairs professionals self-label their political ideology and to explore the relationships among their political ideology, person-environment fit, and demographic information. The researcher utilized a quantitative methodology to survey members of NASPA. This study included responses from 2,045 student affairs professionals from across the United States. The instrument included questions regarding how the participants self-labeled their political ideology, measures for person-organization fit, person-job fit, person-vocation fit, person-group fit, as well as 10 demographic questions. ANOVA, MANOVA, and factorial ANOVA’s were utilized to analyze the data collected. The findings of this study indicate the study sample largely identified as liberal or left of center. When taking account of participants that self-labeled their ideology as extremely liberal, liberal, conservative, and extremely conservative, an overall liberal to conservative ratio of 30.1:1 was revealed. Also, there is a significant relationship between the overall political ideology of participants and their perceived person-organization fit. Further, there are significant relationships between overall political ideology that the participants age, functional area, regional location, position level, gender, time in the field, and institution type. Evidence was also gathered that suggests an interaction between political ideology, person-organization fit, and functional area. Implications for student affairs practitioners in addition to future areas of research are discussed.