TY - JOUR
T1 - College Expectations Promote College Attendance
T2 - Evidence From a Quasiexperimental Sibling Study
AU - Brumley, Lauren D.
AU - Russell, Michael A.
AU - Jaffee, Sara R.
N1 - Funding Information:
The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health was funded by Grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. No direct support was received from Grant P01-HD31921 for the analysis reported in this article.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2019.
PY - 2019/8/1
Y1 - 2019/8/1
N2 - When adolescents are asked how likely they think it is that they will go to college, does their answer influence what they will actually do? Typically, it is difficult to determine whether college expectations promote academic achievement or just reflect a reasonable forecast of what is likely to happen to them. We used a sample of siblings from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N = 1,766) to test whether associations between college expectations and educational attainment remained after accounting for unobserved family factors that may shape both educational expectations and attainment. Compared with their siblings, adolescents with higher college expectations were also 43% more likely to attend college, even when analyses controlled for grades and IQ. The effect of college expectations on college attendance was strongest among youths living in higher-socioeconomic-status families.
AB - When adolescents are asked how likely they think it is that they will go to college, does their answer influence what they will actually do? Typically, it is difficult to determine whether college expectations promote academic achievement or just reflect a reasonable forecast of what is likely to happen to them. We used a sample of siblings from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N = 1,766) to test whether associations between college expectations and educational attainment remained after accounting for unobserved family factors that may shape both educational expectations and attainment. Compared with their siblings, adolescents with higher college expectations were also 43% more likely to attend college, even when analyses controlled for grades and IQ. The effect of college expectations on college attendance was strongest among youths living in higher-socioeconomic-status families.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85068833821&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85068833821&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/0956797619855385
DO - 10.1177/0956797619855385
M3 - Article
C2 - 31287768
AN - SCOPUS:85068833821
SN - 0956-7976
VL - 30
SP - 1186
EP - 1194
JO - Psychological Science
JF - Psychological Science
IS - 8
ER -