Poster #78 - High School Ethnic Composition and Latino Academic Achievement in College: The Role of Cultural Values

• In Event: 3-053 - Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Section - Education, Schooling

Integrative Statement

Latinos are the fastest growing ethnic minority group in the United States (NCES, 2017). Such population growth is represented in school settings, where students of color have greater representation than before (Orfield & Lee, 2007). Existing research suggests that racial/ethnic diversity on campuses and classrooms promote academic outcomes across grade levels (Lewis et al., 2017). To explore whether the benefits of racial/ethnic diversity in high school extend into higher education for Latino youth, the present study first examined whether high school ethnic composition predicted academic achievement in the first semester of college, controlling for high school achievement. The second study aim was to investigate whether a salient Latino cultural value, familism values and its subscales (e.g., support, obligation, referent), moderated associations between high school ethnic composition and college GPA.

Latino adolescents who participated in a larger study of the Latino transition to college (N=209; 64% female) completed 16-items from the Mexican American Cultural Value Scale designed to assess familism cultural values (MACVS; Knight et al., 2010; α=.91) during the spring or summer before college matriculation. High school and college academic records were obtained from institutional data. Participants attended 91 different high schools with varying Latino composition ranging from 6% to 96% (M=.52, SD=.26).

Multiple regression analyses were conducted in Mplus using maximum likelihood estimation to account for missing data, and then simple slopes for significant interactions were probed using Preacher and colleagues’ (2006) online computational tool. Covariates included sex, high school GPA, ACT score, and parent education level. In initial models, Latino high school composition was not associated with college GPA (β=.184, p=.403). However, several significant interactions emerged when the various subscales of familism were included in the model. Among the familism measures, familism referent was identified as a significant moderator (β=.132, p=.031); familism support (β=.113, p=.065) and familism total (β=.119, p=.055) were marginally significant. All two-way interactions were probed for simple slopes. Latino high school composition was associated with higher GPA in college for youth with high levels of familism referent (β=.586, p=.02; 36% of the sample), but not youth with average and low levels. Similarly, Latino composition was associated with higher GPA in college for adolescents with high levels of familism support (β=.573, p=.05; 40.4% of the sample), but not adolescents with average and low levels. No simple slopes emerged as significant for the familism total moderation models.

Our findings suggest that the association between high schools’ ethnic composition and college academic achievement is only significant for Latino youth who also endorsed high levels of familism referent as a cultural value. The current study highlights the importance of understanding the intersection between cultural values and shifts in ecological contexts. Future research will probe whether changes in person-context interaction (e.g., changes in ethnic composition and changes in Latino cultural values) predict academic achievement across the first year of college to understand whether high school or college ethnic composition or cultural values are better predictors of achievement trajectories in higher education.

Authors

• HyeJung Park, Arizona State University
  Presenting Author

• Leah D. Doane, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author