In pursuit of success: An analysis of the relationship between non -cognitive variables and attainment for students of color in American higher education

The purpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of non-cognitive variables in predicting postsecondary attainment for African American, Asian American/Pacific Islander, Latina/o, Native American and White students. This study was designed to extend the findings of previous studies that investigated the use of non-cognitive and cognitive factors in forecasting student attainment. For this study, non-cognitive variables were defined as self-concept, student academic expectancy and parental academic expectancy of the student. Gender, family socio-economic status (SES), parent's level of education and reading, science, and mathematics proficiency scores were also examined to understand what effect these variables may have on student attainment.;In this study, three primary questions were addressed in discerning the relationship between non-cognitive variables and student attainment: (1) Is there a difference in the relationship between non-cognitive variables and attainment for African American, Asian American/Pacific Islander, Latina/o, Native American and White students? (2) Are some non-cognitive variables more valid predictors of attainment than other non-cognitive variables for these same groups of students? (3) Are some cognitive variables better than non-cognitive variables for predicting attainment for the five racial/ethnic student populations studied?;An initial sample size of 14,915 was selected from the Third Follow-Up 1994 (F3) of the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88) of which 65.8 percent were White, 14.1 percent Latina/o, 11.3 percent African American, 7.3 percent Asian American/Pacific Islander and 1.4 percent Native American. This empirical study utilized the Statistical Packages for the Social Sciences to perform frequency distributions, cross-tabulations, binary logistic regression analysis, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and tests for multicollinearity.;This study found that there is a significant relationship between some non-cognitive variables and attainment for African American, Asian American/Pacific Islander, Latina/o and White students. None of the selected independent variables proved significant for Native Americans. Student expectancies of educational attainment proved significant for all racial/ethnic groups except Native Americans. Self-concept proved insignificant in predicting postsecondary attainment for all racial/ethnic groups of students. The mathematics proficiency test was the only cognitive variable that indicated significance and only for White students. According to these findings, it appears that students' academic expectancies are better predictors of postsecondary attainment than students' self-concept and that there are different relationships between the non-cognitive variables and postsecondary attainment by race/ethnicity.