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especially in the US context with specific groups such as the increasingly large
Latino population.
To address this gap, this study included constructs tapping students' approaches
to learning, motivation related factors (e.g., academic efficacy and goal orientation),
OTL (e.g., advanced level of math and science education in high school), and demo-
graphic/background variables (e.g., gender, ethnicity, SES and prior knowledge).
The first specific purpose of this study was to examine cross-ethnic invariance across
White and Latino students in terms of self-regulatory beliefs, learning strategies, and
motivational constructs in a 4-year college setting. In addition, a second purpose of
the study was to develop and test a structural model of relationships between stu-
dent background characteristics, OTL, learning strategies, motivational variables,
and academic achievement.
Method
Research Context
The study examined the relationship between learning strategies and academic
achievement and the differences between Hispanic
1
and non-Hispanic students'
use of strategies, educational attitudes, and motivation to learn in a 4-year state
college setting in the Southwest. This college selects from among the top 30% of
high-school students in California. At the time of the study, the college had a total
of 16,479 enrolled students. The majority of students attending were of Mexican
American, Hispanic descent. The breakdown for the campus by ethnicity was 36.9%
Hispanic, 13.0% African American, 0.9% Native American, 6.3% Asians, 0.5%
Pacific Islander, 36.4% White, 3.0% Filipino, and 3.1% other ethnicities. The per-
centage of new freshmen was 30.41% and 44.2% of the new transfers attended local
community colleges.
Subjects
There were two components to the data collection: a
phone
survey and an
online
survey. The final number of students contacted for the
phone
survey was 2,232 non-
Hispanics (63.4% of the total sample) of which the majority were White (1,402,
39.8%) and the remainder of the sample were Hispanic/Latino (1,295, 38.7%). The
final number of students responding to the
online
survey was 2,012 (1,307 65%
non-Hispanics and 705 35% Hispanics).
1
There are a variety of terms found in the literature including the generic terms Latino and Hispanic
as well as more population-specific terms such as Mexican-American or Cuban. There is no
widespread agreement about the use of a single term, and arguments for different choices based
on political and other considerations are numerous. In this chapter we use the term Hispanic and
Latino interchangeably.
