Negotiating Identity in Early Adolescence: Perceived Social Class, Psychosocial Adjustment, and Educational Engagement

• In Event: Understandings of Subjective Social Status and Predictors of Educational Achievement among Youth

Abstract

Economic inequality in the U.S., touches adolescents’ lives in myriad ways, including how they construe their families’ socioeconomic position in society and how it influences their well-being and future orientations. Yet, researchers are only just attending to the consequences of youths’ perceived social class status, beyond SES. In the current study, we assessed (1) the extent to which youths’ perceptions of social class position and status (i.e., subjective social status (SSS), social class group membership, parental education) are related to educational engagement directly, and indirectly related through well-being (i.e., psychological, social) and (2) whether the socioeconomic status (SES) composition of the school moderates these relations (see Figure 1 for conceptual model).

Data come from an ongoing study of 1,010 8th grade youth. The sample is 52% female, 40% White, 37% Latinx, 8% Asian American, 6% African American, and 12% Other; 42% of youth were from immigrant households. Youth-reported parental education indicated that 33% of parents had a Bachelor’s degree or higher whereas 16% reported less than a high school diploma. 21% of youth attended a majority low-income school (based on percentage of students receiving free- and reduced-school meals), 31% a mixed-income school, and 48% a majority non-low-income school).

Results of latent variable path analyses indicated that:
(1) Social class group membership and parental education levels were positively associated with educational engagement (β = .18, p < .001 and β = .28, p < .001 respectively) whereas SSS was not (β = -.03, p = .46). The overall model fit was good (2 (24) = 56.80, p < .001; RMSEA = .04 [CI: .02 - .05]; CFI = .93. R2 = .30).

(2) As shown in Figure 2, higher SSS and social class group membership were associated with both indicators of well-being; higher levels of parental education was associated with social, but not psychological, well-being. In turn, psychological, but not social, well-being was associated with educational engagement. Tests of indirect effects confirmed that SSS and social class group membership were indirectly related to educational engagement via psychological well-being only. Finally, parental education predicted youth educational engagement directly but not through well-being.

(3) Results of multiple group analyses indicated strength of association differences between SSS and psychological well-being but only for youth attending (a) majority low-income versus mixed-income schools, and (b) majority non-low-income versus mixed-income schools. Tests of indirect effects confirmed that SSS mattered more for youths’ psychological well-being, and in turn their educational engagement, but only for those attending non-low-income schools as compared with those attending mixed-income schools.

Findings highlight a more nuanced portrait of how distinct indicators of social class position and status relate to youth outcomes than previously reported. Psychological well-being appears to be a more consistent conduit through which youth perceptions of social class position and status affects their educational engagement, but these associations are further conditioned by the socioeconomic mix of their peers at school. Taken together, findings suggest that adolescents are sensitive to social status and that their perceptions uniquely contribute to their well-being.

Authors

• Rashmita S. Mistry, University of California - Los Angeles
  Presenting Author

• Aprile D Benner, University of Texas at Austin
  Non-Presenting Author

• Farin Bakhtiari, California State University, Fresno
  Non-Presenting Author