Validating Educational Aspiration for Latino Immigrant Populations

Introduction: Based on the U.S. Census estimates, Latinos already constitute 24.3% of the K-12 population and will increase to 28.6% of the total population by the year 2060. Because Latinos underachieve in education, and because educational success is a key indicator of subsequent health and well-being, it is important to have measures that provide early detection of academic success for this growing segment of the population.

Educational aspirations are positively associated with academic success, such as higher test score, graduation rates, and increases in post-secondary enrollment. Educational aspiration is defined as the level of education the adolescent expects to achieve and is often measured by a single question: “how far in school do you expect to go?” or “what level of education do you expect to achieve?” In prior studies we found this single-question method produces a ceiling effect (a highly skewed distribution toward the upper end of the response set) that limits the utility of the measure. This presentation reports on the psychometric properties of a new educational aspiration scale that reduces the typical ceiling effect by anchoring the child’s thought process with a contrasting question. By contrasting desire in an ideal world with expectation given current resources and limitations, the distribution of responses is drastically increased, and the measure is more meaningful and predictive of other school-based measures.

Methods: This study is a part of a larger intervention study that is being conducted in several urban middle schools in the south-western portion of central United States. The design of this study is an interrupted times series in which participants are asked to give two baseline data points followed by two additional waves post-intervention. The study included (n=358) Latino youth and their parents (n=140) who chose to participate in the intervention program. Participants were selected based on self-identification of being Latino and whether a parent spoke Spanish in the home. The sample is broken down as follows, 42% of students are female (µ=13-yrs), 47% of parents are female and 46% of the student sample are foreign-born. Additionally, 95% of the students qualified for free/reduced lunch at the beginning of the study.

Results: Data has been collected and is currently being analyzed. Standard psychometric approaches will be used to examine factor structure and test-retest reliability longitudinally. Criterion validity will be examined by regressing school-based measures such as attitudes toward school, attendance, and GPA on educational aspirations.