Poster #83 - College Students’ Reflections on Their Parents' Support of Their Educational Attainment Goals

• In Event: 1-005 - Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Section - Education, Schooling

Integrative Statement

Parents’ attainment expectations, or how far parents expect their children to go in school, is a stronger predictor of students’ academic success than other forms of parent involvement (Fan & Chen, 2001). Students’ perceptions of their parents’ expectations and students’ beliefs about the usefulness of educationally-relevant tasks (e.g., utility values) relate to their educational decisions (e.g., Expectancy Value Theory; Wigfield & Eccles, 2000). For instance, parents’ attainment expectations are positively associated with whether their children attend and graduate from college (Bui & Rush, 2016; Zhan & Sherraden, 2011), and students’ educational utility values are associated with their persistence in school (Foley et al., 2014). However, less is known about how students believe their parents are supporting them in their educational endeavors, which could have implications for their college persistence and degree attainment. The present mixed-methods study examined (1) college students’ reflections on their parents’ support of their education; and, (2) the relation between parents’ attainment expectations and students’ educational utility values.
Participants were 371 college students attending a mid-size public university in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States (see Table 1). Participants completed an online questionnaire during spring 2017 as part of a larger study. The questionnaire included items on participant demographics, educational utility values (Murdock, 1999), and students’ perceptions of their parents’ educational attainment expectations. Participants also responded to an open-ended question asking them to reflect upon their experiences prior to college which helped them meet their parents’ attainment expectations. Open-ended responses were coded using emergent thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006).
Preliminary analyses of the open-ended responses indicated that most participants (89%) recalled their parents doing something that helped them meet their parents’ attainment expectations. The most frequently coded theme was parents’ active involvement (50%), which included parents’ arranging tutoring, discussing school with them, and assisting them with college applications. Parents’ provision of financial assistance (49%) and emotional support (24%) were also mentioned (see Table 2).
Linear regressions tested the association between students’ perceptions of their parents’ attainment expectations and students’ educational utility values. Controlling for participant gender, transfer status, ethnicity, and self-reported GPA, parents’ expectations positively predicted students’ educational utility values, b = 0.26, F(4, 370) = 4.15, p < .001. Students who reported that their parents expected that they would attain at least a Bachelor’s degree, had higher educational utility values.
Our results suggest that parents may pair discussing certain levels of attainment with explanations of why reaching that minimum is important for future success, thus impacting students’ perceptions of the utility of education. Based on our coding scheme, parents’ active involvement and parents’ provision of financial assistance were the most common forms of support that students mentioned. This suggests that students may be aware of barriers to seeking a college degree and acknowledge their parents’ role in reducing those barriers.

Authors

• Brittany Gay, UMBC
  Presenting Author

• Rebecca Dowling, UMBC
  Non-Presenting Author

• Susan Sonnenschein, UMBC
  Non-Presenting Author