Presenter(s): Alejandra Miranda − Psychology, Spanish
Faculty Mentor(s): Ellen McWhirter
Oral Session 2M
Research Area: Social Science
Funding: McNair Scholarship
Latinx students remain significantly underrepresented at four-year colleges and universities (Fry & Taylor, 2013). For this reason, examining associations between mentoring, ethnic identity, and postsecondary plans in Latinx students may help to explain the continuing underrepresentation in higher education. This study discovers associations between mentoring, ethnic identity, and post-high school plans (PLANS) in 665 Latinx high school students. Mentoring helps integrate and connect students to academic experiences (Crisp et al., 2017). Unfortunately, many Latinx parents are unable to provide their children with academic support to pursue a higher education due to various factors such as language barriers, work, or lack of education (Ceballo, 2004). Ethnic identity is also found to be a strong predictor of school engagement and school positivity (Booth et al., 2014). In general, Latinx families put great value on education, hard work, and family. In this study, we hypothesize that first, students who report low mentoring and ethnic identity will choose “community/2 year” or “no school” PLANS significantly more than those who have high mentoring and ethnic identity. This study will also examine sex as an additional influential factor, in response to an increase in Latinas pursuing higher education (Gloria et al., 2005). Therefore, our second hypothesis is that females will report more mentoring and ethnic identity than males. Altogether, this study examines mentoring, ethnic identity, and sex impact on PLANS. The present study uses existing data from participants at a regional conference for Latinx high school students. A one- way analysis of variance (ANOVA) analysis is used to examine mentoring and ethnic identity correlation with PLANS. A factorial multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) is used to examine differences between PLANS (no school, community/2 year, and 2 plus 4 or 4 years) and dependent variables (mentoring and ethnic identity). Findings yield to a better understanding of the importance of mentoring and ethnic identity in Latinxs future educational plans. *Latinx is a gender-neutral, forward term that encapsulates all individuals and breaks away with the classification of gender.