Using a Positive Psychology and Family Framework to Understand Mexican American Adolescents’ College-Going Beliefs

Positive psychology is a useful framework to understand Mexican American adolescents’ academic experiences. We used a quantitative, predictive design to explore how presence of meaning in life, search for meaning in life, subjective happiness, hope, and family importance influenced 131 Mexican Ameri...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Hispanic journal of behavioral sciences 2017-02, Vol.39 (1), p.66-81
Main Authors: Vela, Javier C., Lenz, A. Stephen, Sparrow, Gregory Scott, Gonzalez, Stacey Lee
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescents
Attitude Measures
College Attendance
Families & family life
Familism
Family Influence
Goal Orientation
Happiness
Hispanic Americans
Likert Scales
Meaning
Mexican Americans
Multiple Regression Analysis
Predictions
Predictor Variables
Psychological Patterns
Psychology
Questionnaires
Self Efficacy
Statistical Analysis
Student Attitudes
Teenagers
Well Being
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Positive psychology is a useful framework to understand Mexican American adolescents’ academic experiences. We used a quantitative, predictive design to explore how presence of meaning in life, search for meaning in life, subjective happiness, hope, and family importance influenced 131 Mexican American adolescents’ college-going beliefs. We used the Meaning in Life Questionnaire, Subjective Happiness Scale, Hope Scale, Pan-Hispanic Familism Scale, and College-Going Self-Efficacy Scale to measure the aforementioned factors. Using multiple regression analysis, findings indicated that hope and familism were significant predictors of college-going beliefs. Higher levels of hope and familism positively predicted college-going beliefs. We provide a discussion regarding the importance of these findings as well as recommendations for future research.
ISSN:0739-9863
1552-6364
DOI:10.1177/0739986316682717