School-Related Parental Involvement and Adolescent Academic Achievement: The Role of Community Poverty

Among the various influences in the current literature on positive adolescent developmental outcomes, parenting appears to be one of the most consistent and intuitively appealing (Hill & Tyson, 2009). Specifically, research suggests that school-related parental involvement is particularly important in affecting adolescents' academic achievement (Hill & Craft, 2003; Wang & Sheikh-Khalil, 2013). However, the effectiveness of school-related parental involvement in influencing positive adolescent academic outcomes may be hindered by certain circumstances in the broader community context (McBride Murry, Berkel, Gaylord-Harden, Copeland-Linder, & Nation, 2011). For example, community poverty may prevent parents from effectively influencing adolescents to achieve developmental milestones (Levanthal & Brooks-Gunn, 2000; Wickrama, & Bryant, 2003; Wickrama, Noh, & Bryant, 2005). Given the importance of community poverty, however, there are few studies that have examined the role of community poverty on the association between school-related parental involvement and adolescent academic achievement. In an effort to expand the current literature, in this study we explore how community poverty affects the association between school-related parental involvement and adolescents' academic achievement.School-Related Parental Involvement and Adolescents' Academic AchievementAchieving academic success marks one of the most critical developmental milestones of an adolescent's life. Further, academic success during adolescence is associated with a wide range of positive outcomes, including better physical health, more positive peer affiliation, and economic advantages later in life (e.g., Johnson, Brett, & Deary, 2010; Mechanic & Hansell, 1987). Given the importance of academic achievement in adolescence, factors promoting such outcomes have been the focus of researchers. One such factor is the role of parents (Hill & Craft, 2003). More specifically, several theories and empirical findings suggest that school-related parental involvement is associated with adolescents' academic success (e.g., Hill & Craft, 2003).According to ecological theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Bronfenbrenner & Ceci, 1994), individual development is influenced by several systems, including microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem. As a primary element in the microsystem, parents are critical in fostering the development of the child (Lerner, Brentano, Dowling, & Anderson, 2002). Parental involvement with school-related activities also suggested interactions between parents and schools (mesosystem). Parents can be effective in promoting adolescents' academic achievement by providing direct assistance to their children's academic efforts (Hill & Tyson, 2009).Parent's school-related involvement can come in many forms, such as helping their children with homework, participating in school-related activities, and assisting them with school-related projects (Epstein, 1995). Several studies found that school-related parental involvement is associated with adolescents' receiving higher scores on standardized tests, higher grade point averages, and a general overall sense of higher academic accomplishment (W. Chen & Gregory, 2009; Gordon & Cui, 2012; Hill & Tyson, 2009). However, several other studies found no significant effect of parental involvement on achievement success in adolescence (Okpala, Okpala, & Smith, 2001). Such inconsistent findings are likely due to differences in the operationalization of parental involvement (e.g., general parental involvement vs. school-specific involvement). Given the focus of adolescent academic achievement outcome, rather than examining parental involvement in general, a more school-related parental involvement was assessed in this study.In addition to focusing on school-related parental involvement, this study also extends the current literature by focusing on adolescents. …