A Study of the Relationship between Family’s Resources and Academic Achievement

• Main Authors: TZENG PYNG-GUEY, 曾平貴
• Other Authors: 林桂綉
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/93176215790671388877

碩士 === 國立臺北大學 === 社會學系 === 95 === This study primarily addresses how family resources create differences in students' academic achievement. Both family income and parental education levels affect students' academic aspirations, as well as their academic achievement. The majority of existing studies use only a small sample or a single residential area as the basis for analyzing the relationship between family background and academic achievement. This study uses 2002-2003 data from the Academia Sinica's "Taiwan Youth Project". The data include four years of student questionnaires and one year of parent questionnaires, and are used as a basis for analyzing the relationship between family background and student achievement. Four years of student questionnaires constitute a latent variable that measures academic achievement while avoiding the bias of measuring academic achievement from only one year of data. Data from student and parent questionnaires help to fill in missing information. The research reveals that since family income has no direct effect on academic achievement, parent-child interaction must be the intervening variable that affects children’s academic achievement. This indirect effect is smaller than the effect created by parents' education levels. Although fathers' level of education has no direct effect on academic achievement, fathers' education can have an impact through two intervening variables, namely parent-child interaction and children’s aspirations for academic achievement. Mothers' level of education has a direct effect on academic achievement, and the indirect effects apparent through parent-child interaction and aspirations for academic achievement are larger than the indirect effect caused by fathers' education levels, indicating that mothers' education levels have a large impact on their children’s academic achievement. In addition to the impact of mothers' and fathers' education, children’s gender differences can also result in different levels of academic achievement. Family background as transmitted through parent-child interaction has a proportionately larger effect on daughters. As a result, daughters have higher levels of academic achievement than sons. Although parent-child interaction has a relatively small impact on children’s academic aspirations, such aspirations do not simply appear from nowhere. Children not only imitate their parents to create higher levels of academic aspiration, such aspiration may also be affected by parent-child interaction, as shown in the structural equation model. Through positive interaction with their children, parents are able to make their offspring identify with parental educational achievement. In addition to positive parent-child interaction, financial and human resources may also affect children's academic achievement.