What really matters? Predicting Latino academic achievement from parenting, self efficacy, stress, number of successful relatives, and demographic variables
Abstract
Currently in the U.S., Latinos are rapidly undergoing a large population increase. Yet, Latino students continue to be amongst the lowest academic achieving ethnic group. To learn which variables promote Latinos academic achievement, the current study examined the potential influence of parenting behaviors, self efficacy, stress, number of successful individuals, age, and gender on GPA. Ultimately, the latter variables were used to predict GPA. The parenting behaviors measured was maternal/ paternal monitoring, child disclosure, solicitation, and quality of parent-child relationship. Students were sampled from Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and the Bright Prospect Program in Pomona, California. To determine the potential influence of the variables measured, correlation tests were conducted and a stepwise regression was used to predict GPA. Results show maternal monitoring was able to predict GPA. Along with the other study variables, maternal monitoring accounted for 23% of GPA variance. Implications for parenting and future research are discussed.