The Asian-American Difference?: Parental Expectations, Self-Efficacy, and Adolescent Educational and Psychological Outcomes

Background/Purpose: Asian Americans are the fastest-growing racial group in the U.S. While Asian Americans (hereinafter AAs) made up less than 1% of the total U.S. population prior to 1965, in 2011, they comprised 5.8%. Despite this growing presence of AAs in the U.S., the group receives little attention and is portrayed as “model minorities.” This study is part of a broader research effort to understand whether and how AA stereotypes explain AA youths' academic expectations, performance, and self-esteem. 

Method: The study used a national sample of 4,833 eighth graders and their parents from Wave 7 of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Class of 1998 (ECLS-K). ECLS-K is a nationally representative longitudinal study of kindergarten children followed from 1998 to 2007. Given the dearth of national data on AA children and families, it provides an unparalleled opportunity to conduct analyses on children across all races, including AAs (n=217). Models were estimated using OLS and logistic regression in STATA13. Dependent variables are youth’s academic expectations (grade importance; final educational degree); academic performance (reading/math scores); and adolescent self-esteem. Independent variables are parents’ academic expectations and youth’s self-efficacy. Covariates include child and parent demographics. The study also examined whether race moderated the effects of the predictors on the outcome variables.

Results: Examining all 8^th graders, the study found that AA youth place more emphasis on grades than their White or Hispanic counterparts but not more than their Black counterparts. While AAs and Blacks (sometimes Hispanics) have similar grade expectations and perceived competence, the study found that they do not translate into educational aspirations for higher (tertiary) education. Interestingly, however, all minority youth tend to place significantly more emphasis on grades than White youth (p<.01). Countering the tiger-parent stereotype, after controlling for marital status and SES, AA parents no longer held higher educational expectations of their children than do other minority parents. However, all minority parents had higher educational expectations for their children than White parents (p<0.001). As for academic performance, AAs had higher scores than Blacks or Hispanics (p<0.001) but only marginally outperformed Whites (p<.10). Lastly, AA youth had significantly lower self-esteem than all others, while Blacks had higher self-esteem than their peers (p<.01). Parental expectations and youth’s self-efficacy had positive effects on academic performance but only the latter had an impact on self-esteem. No moderation effects by race were found. 

Implications: This study is a unique attempt to address an important gap in social work research. Methodologically, the study uses a large-scale national dataset to examine youths across all races, including AAs. Substantively, it provides mixed empirical evidence for AA stereotypes. That is, AA parents were found to be no different than other minority parents when it came to expectations about their children’s education. Moreover, race did not moderate the impacts of parental expectations and youth self-efficacy on youth outcomes. However, AA children did have significantly higher academic aspirations and lower self-esteem. In the future, there needs to be richer data on AAs that allow studies to explore why child well-being is compromised for this minority group.