NEIGHBORHOOD STRUCTURE AND ACADEMIC SELF CONCEPT: A MULTILEVEL MODEL

Abstract

There is a robust correlation between a student's academic achievement and his/her academic self concept. Various contextual variables, such as the school population's average academic ability, have been shown to have an effect on academic self-concept and on the relationship between self-concept and measured achievement. Community variables can have an effect on a student's academic achievement, though the relationship with academic self-concept is not well established. Urbanicity of the environment is a variable of interest, as there are various ways to describe and measure a neighborhood, though there is still a question about what makes a neighborhood urban. This study seeks to measure urbanicity and uses this urbanicity variable in a multilevel model, estimating the direct effects of the context on academic self-concept and explores the possibility that urbanicity modifies the relationship between self-concept and other student variables. Analysis revealed that neighborhood variables had no significant relationship with self-concept