Parental Involvement, Social Capital, and Academic Aspirations among Hispanic Adolescents: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach

Hispanics have the highest disparities in education and economic outcomes. To better understand lagging education rates, social capital theory is used as a framework to explore the relationship between parental involvement, social initiative, and educational aspirations. Data were collected from the Youth and Family Project (West Texas) with 785 Hispanic adolescent participants. The method section includes a structural equation model to explore relationships. AMOS 29 is used to test indirect relationships as well as multigroup analysis. The findings demonstrate an indirect positive association between parental influence on academic aspirations through the social initiative for males and females, accounting for 22% and 24% of the variance, respectively. Parental peer influence was significantly related to male's and female's social initiative. Social initiative for males and females was significantly related to academic aspirations. The findings show how parental involvement and social initiative both influence academic aspirations of Hispanic adolescents through gendered pathways, inferring that the school experience is different depending on gender.