Hispanic Students’'Sense of Control in Relation to Postsecondary Enrollment Outcomes

• In Event: 21.013 - Excellence in Education Research: Early Career Scholars and Their Work

Abstract

U.S. Hispanics are the fastest growing minority population pursuing post-secondary education, yet their bachelor degree attainment lags behind other ethnic–racial groups. Previous work supports the theory that having a high locus of control (LOC) can enable persistence in challenging post-secondary settings. We examine LOC as a potential mitigate against low college enrollment, and hypothesize that Hispanic students’ capability to enroll in post-secondary institutions (e.g., community college, 4-year colleges), in the face of personal, academic, and financial challenges, is likely predicated on their belief that they control their academic futures. We modelled college enrollment using a path-model using a generalized structural equation modeling (GSEM) approach. Our findings indicate that LOC decreases the likelihood of Hispanic students’ post-secondary enrollment. This work advances the current state of knowledge on how we understand Hispanic students’ transition to college, and informs the development of potential interventions supporting the academic success of this growing and significant community.
I utilize the Study of Deeper Learning (SDL) data to fill this important gap in the literature and examine the relationship between Hispanic students’ beliefs regarding locus of control and their persistence relative to post-secondary outcomes using a Generalized Structural Equation Modeling (GSEM) Approach. I present results to the following research questions:
Research Questions, Hypotheses
• What is the direct relationship between Hispanic students’ locus of control and post-secondary outcomes, after controlling for their school’s support for post-secondary life and academic engagement?
• What is the relationship between Hispanic students’ locus of control as mediated by their self-efficacy, perseverance, self-management (e.g., time management), and previous academic achievement, after controlling for their school’s support for post-secondary life and academic engagement?

Methods
It was posited that having a high internal locus of control positively contributes to Hispanic students enrolling in post-secondary institutions and persisting through graduation. AERA-SDL’s data set is uniquely well positioned to explore this relationship. It is both large, substantially Hispanic, and includes post-secondary outcome data from the National Student Clearinghouse (Zerser, 2016). The sample of Hispanic students was sizable enough for Structural Equation Modeling, even after accounting for sample attrition and student survey participation rates (Rickles, 2014). Cohorts 3 and 4 are specifically well suited for this type of analysis because of their relatively recent participation in the student survey (2012) that collected information on intrapersonal factors, including locus of control. This allowed for the meaningful analysis of post-secondary outcomes for Hispanic students as they relate to their locus of control beliefs.
A Generalized Structural Equation Model (GSEM) with a dichotomous outcome variable (i.e., post-secondary enrollment in 2-or-4 year colleges) was specified. The variables selected for this analysis come from Cohorts 3 and 4 of the larger SDL study, and include a subset of California students who took the student survey (N = 1,762), and are also Hispanic (N = 567).
Results
The proposed theoretical model (Figure 1, left) was re-specified to account for missing data—there were not enough students with achievement data, for example, so this term was dropped from GSEM analysis. A preliminary model (Figure 1, right) was specified and resulted locus of control positively predicting perseverance (p <.001), self-efficacy (p <.001), and self-management (p <.001). Self-efficacy positively predicted perseverance (p <.001), and self-management (p <.001), and was related to an increase likelihood for post-secondary enrollment (p <.05). Interestingly, the direct path between locus of control and post-secondary outcomes was statistically significant, but negative (p <.05). Support for post-secondary life and academic engagement were included in the analysis, but their relationships to post-secondary outcomes and other variables were not statistically significant.

Author

• Stephen J. Aguilar, University of Southern California