The effects of parental involvement and home resources on student standardized test scores

Abstract

This thesis studies the effects of parental involvement and home resources on students' standardized test scores. The National Educatipnal Longitudinal Study (NELS:88) has been employed using a holistic approach that includes structural and individual level factors which capture greater multidimensionality and provide for larger sample sizes (24,674), making it possible to control for several sub-groups. The findings indicate postive effects for the impact of parental involvement and home resources on students' academic success. However, parents' socioeconomic status has been identified as a major influential factor for students' academic achievement. Along with socioeconomic status, family size related to academic success was not supported. Since social status is the most important factor, family size, family structure, as well as home resources became less important when controlling for social class. In conclusion, the findings give a more holistic view about parental involvement factors which underlie certain entities that are related to social and economical issues.