Family, socioeconomic status and mathematics motivation : exploring pathways through latent variable analysis

Abstract

This article-based Master’s Thesis begins with an extended summary (“kappen”) touching on theoretical underpinnings and methodological concerns applicable to the study of socioeconomic status, motivation and educational achievement. Following is the article manuscript “Student motivation and parental attitude as mediators for SES effects : Evidence from TIMSS 2015,” written for submission to Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research. The article explores student motivation and parent attitudes as mediators of SES effects on student achievement using TIMSS 2015 data through the research problem “how do 1) motivation and 2) attitudes at home mediate the relationship between socioeconomic status and mathematics achievement?”. The data includes achievement items and context questionnaires collected from Norwegian fifth graders (n = 4329) and their parents (n = 1819) and are analyzed using structural equation modelling and latent variable analysis in the statistical software R. Findings indicate that intrinsic motivation and parent attitudes do not explain any of the SES effects on achievement in our sample. Extrinsic motivation mediates some of the total SES effects, controlled for age and gender, though much remains unexplained by the variables included in the current analyses.