Academic Socialization of Black Parents: A Reliability and Validity Study

• In Event: 2-132 - The Content, Context, and Consequences of Parental Socialization of Ethnic Minority Youth

Integrative Statement

Parental academic socialization (PAS) is the collection of academic messages parents use to convey their academic values, beliefs, expectations, and assessment of their child's academic performance. Extant research has found that of the three most widely studied forms of involvement (i.e., home and school involvement, and PAS), PAS has demonstrated the strongest positive relation to adolescent academic achievement (Hill & Tyson, 2009). However, there is very little research capturing PAS in Black parents. The work that does capture Black parents’ PAS includes parents’ educational attainment expectations, involvement, and general parenting behaviors rather than PAS messages. This parenting research suggests that Black parents hold high educational attainment expectations of their children (Suizzo et al., 2012) and engage in “no-nonsense” parenting, which is a combination of high control and affection positively linked to child academic success (Brody & Flor, 1998). Research using a broader range of PAS messages in Black parent-adolescent dyads has found that messages of pressure (i.e., pressure to meet high academic standards) and shame (i.e., shame for poor academic performance) are negatively associated with achievement. Effort messages (i.e., strong academic effort precedes success) have yielded mixed findings being negatively related to GPA, but positively related to engagement and motivation. Messages of balance (i.e., balancing one’s well-being or happiness with one’s academic strivings) are positively associated with adolescents’ engagement and motivation (Ross, 2017).

The present research will examine the reliability, convergent, divergent, and predictive validity of a recently developed PAS scale in Black parents of middle schoolers (N = 195; 87% female). This research adds parents’ provision of academic autonomy (=.57), academic awareness (=.75), planning for the future (=.79), strategies for success (=.83), and support/encouragement (=.83) to balance (=.69), effort (=.80), pressure (=.60), and shame (=.80) messages. These PAS items are measured using a response scale of 1 (not at all like one’s parenting) to 5 (just like one’s parenting). This study will employ confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) via structural equation modeling (SEM) with latent PAS variables to examine model fit, factor loadings, and separate correlational analyses to examine convergent, divergent, and predictive validity of this recently developed scale.

Preliminary analyses suggest adequate to strong reliability (with the exceptions of the weak internal consistency of autonomy and pressure) and convergent validity. Black parents’ PAS messages are linked with relevant covariates (i.e., parent gender, family income, and parent education), parent perceptions of their child’s academic competence and preparation for academic tasks, parent perceptions of their child’s school, and parenting behaviors (see Table 1). Preliminary findings suggest that PAS messages of pressure and shame are negatively associated with positive parenting behaviors, parent academic self-efficacy, and parent perceptions of their child’s academic competence and preparation, and of their child’s school. The remaining PAS messages demonstrate positive relations to convergent validity variables. In particular, parents that make efforts to know how their child is doing in school, offer strategies for success and support also report more involvement, positive communication, warmth and responsiveness. Implications for Black adolescent academic development and predictive validity will be discussed.

Authors

• Latisha Ross, University of Michigan
  Presenting Author

• Stephanie Rowley, University of Michigan
  Non-Presenting Author