The Reciprocal Relationship Between Parental Involvement and Mathematics Achievement: Autoregressive Cross-Lagged Modeling

This study focused on comparing the longitudinal associations between two types of parental involvement (i.e., mathematics value and academic reinforcement) and high school students’ mathematics achievement, using data from the Longitudinal Study of American Youth(LSAY). Results, based on multivariate autoregressive cross-lagged modeling, indicated that parents’ academic reinforcement had no effect on students’ mathematics achievement and vice versa; however, a statistically significant positive reciprocal influence existed between parents’ mathematics value and students’ mathematics achievement throughout high school. This result not only reaffirms that parental involvement is a multidimensional construct but also implies that parental involvement has a domain-specific effect. Results from multigroup analyses revealed that students’ gender did not have a differential effect on these associations.