School-Related Parental Involvement and Adolescent Academic Achievement: The Role of Community Poverty

Although most current studies have established the importance of school-related parental involvement to adolescents' academic achievement, they are limited in that they do not address macrolevel community influences on such an association. This may be due in part to the lack of community-level data or the use of inappropriate statistical strategies that cannot account for the influence of factors at the community level. To address this limitation, in this study, the authors examined the influence of community poverty on the association between school-related parental involvement and adolescents' academic achievement. Using a large, nationally representative sample, results from a multilevel model suggested that, compared to adolescents living in more affluent communities, the positive effect of school-related parental involvement on adolescents' academic achievement was significantly weaker for adolescents living in poor communities. Such findings suggested the importance of community poverty in influencing the effectiveness of school-related parental involvement on adolescents' academic achievement.