A Study of the Relationship of Socioeconomic Status & Student Perceptions of School Effectiveness to Academic Achievement of Engineering Students
The purpose of this study was to examine the relative contribution of socioeconomic status and student perceptions of school effectiveness to academic achievement in engineering students. The variables representing the general factor of socioeconomic status were 1) father’s occupation, 2) father’s schooling, 3) mother’s schooling, 4) family income, and 5) family’s community population. The variables representing student perceptions of school effectiveness were: 1) help seeking factor, 2) professional preparation factor, 3) experience factor, 4) outside classroom activity factor, 5) personal encouragement factor, and 6) delivery factor. A question was developed for this specific study and was completed by 110 senior engineering students from the Durango Institute of Technology in Durango, Mexico. Data were analyzed by means of a truncated component regression. The results of the data analysis indicated that the compounded set of socioeconomic and school factors was significantly related to student achievement, although all factors together explained only 18 percent of the total variance in student achievement. Socioeconomic status by itself did not have a significant relationship with academic achievement of engineering students. Also, the results of the data analysis indicated that professional preparation and personal encouragement had the greatest degree of relationship with student achievement of the six school factors representing student perceptions of school effectiveness. The other school factors – help seeking, experience, outside classroom activity, and delivery – were not significantly associated with academic achievement.
Mexico, Western Kentucky University, Economics, Education, Educational Sociology, Inequality and Stratification, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Social and Cultural Anthropology
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