Within the past few decades African Americans have made a lot of progress in educational attainment and achievement. The gaps between Caucasians and African Americans are slowly narrowing because more African American adolescents are completing high school and going on to college. The present analysis uses archival data collected as part of the Youth Empowerment Project (YEP), which surveyed various health and educational variables of 462 African American adolescents. The present study serves to address three empirical questions: 1) Is there a relationship between educational aspirations and family structure; 2) Is there a relationship between educational aspirations and sexual activity; and 3) Is there a relationship between family structure and sexual activity? The results showed that there was a negative correlation between family structure and educational aspirations. As educational aspirations increased the number of parents in the home decreased, suggesting that having a single parent did not interfere with educational aspirations r = -.173. The results also showed that as educational aspirations increased, the number of sexual partners decreased r = -.141. There was no significant relationship between family structure and sexual activity.

Paper presented to the 3rd Annual Symposium on Graduate Research and Scholarly Projects (GRASP) held at the Hughes Metropolitan Complex, Wichita State University, April 27, 2007.Research completed at the Department of Psychology, College of Liberal Arts and SciencesShani Roberts received the 1st place award at the 2007 GRASP Symposium Non-Oral Division for this paper.