Religiousness as a predictor of academic performance among high-school students
...liefs. The date used came from the first and second follow-up of the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988, which surveyed 25,000 eighth-graders, their parents, teachers, and school principals. The first and second follow-up was done when those students were in 10th grade and 12th grade respectively. The subjects used for the religiousness and academic performance research consisted of 738 Asian Americans, 1294 Hispanics, 1032 African Americans, and 7116 Caucasians, chosen at random. These students came from 815 public schools and 237 private schools. The independent variables in the study were religious activity, religious identity, religious commitment, parental support & supervision, social/psychological variables (SES, locus of control, self-concept), and ethnicity. The dependent variable was academic achievement, which was measured through standardized, composite test scores for reading and math. Hierarchical multiple regression was used to analyze the data they received from the survey. They first studied only SES and academic achievement, then included religious variables, then parenting practices, and then social/psychological variables to see how the influences of religion changes as other factors are involved. Then they included ethnicity in the analysis to see if they could generalize the data across different ethnicities. They found that religiousness had a significant influence on high academic performance. The explanatory powers of the multiple regression was .12, .09, .13, and .18 for Asian Americans, Hispanics, African Americans, and Caucasians. The demographics did not prove to cause a significant change on the impact of religion on academic performance. More religious students are more likely to have more locus of control. Students of parents who are stricter preformed poorer than others. The study does not i...