A STUDY OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE VALUE ORIENTATIONS AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT OF FILIPINO-AMERICAN STUDENTS

The study sought to answer the following questions: (1) What are the value orientations of Filipino-American students? (2) How are their value orientations related to their academic achievement? (a) Which categories of value orientations correlate most highly with achievement? (b) Which categories of value orientations correlate least with achievement?;Procedures. The population of this study consisted of 135 Filipino-American students--73 boys and 62 girls--drawn from a middle school in the San Francisco Unified School District.;Two instruments furnished the basic informational data: The Value Orientation Scale, which measured the value orientations of the students, and the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills, which provided the measure of achievement.;In order to test the hypothesis, the Spearman Rank Correlation was used with level of significance set at .01 and .05.;Hypothesis. It was hypothesized in this study that there is a positive relationship between Filipino value orientations and academic achievement, i.e., those value orientations which are reflectively Filipino will have a high correlation with achievement.;Summary of Findings. The findings of the study may be summarized as follows: (1) The Filipino-American students in the study scored high on (a) Expressive Orientation; (b) Formal School Compliance; (c) Idealized School Goals; (d) Instrumental Orientation; (e) Faith in Human Nature; (f) Self-Esteem. (2) Of the seven value orientations enumerated above, the following were indicated to relate most highly with academic achievement. (a) Formal School Compliance; (b) Idealized School Goals; (c) Instrumental Orientation; (d) Faith in Human Nature; (e) Occupational Reward Values.;Conclusions. While not all Filipino value orientations in this study predict success for Filipino students, the data in general suggest that there exists, a positive relationship between Filipino value orientations and academic achievement.;It appears that academic achievement entails at the minimum, the following value orientations toward school-prescribed activity for Filipinos: (1) individual conformity with the objectives toward which school tasks are geared, indicated in this study by high scores on Formal School Complicance, Idealized School Goals, and Instrumental Orientation, (2) confidence in the good of mankind which generates smooth interpersonal relationships in the institutional climate of the school, indicated here by high scores on Faith in Human Nature, and (3) a collective rather than self-orientation toward goal attainment objective, indicated in this study by high scores on Occupational Reward Values which effected a negative relationship to achievement.