The Impact of Parental Income and Divorce on Perceived Education

Charlie Arechederra

Why Did we Conduct This Research?

  • People make judgments about others with minimal information.
  • Students experience prejudice from teachers because of their family background.
  • Even students in elementary school experience stereotyping from students based on their family’s Socioeconomic Status (SES).

Independent Variable 1 - Parental Income

  • Construct Definition: Parental income was defined as money which a subject’s parent’s make through employment.
  • Operationalization: Parental income was quantified by either being low ($30,000) or high (150,000).

Independent Variable 2 - Parents Marital Status

  • Construct Definition: Parents marital status was defined as whether the subject’s parents are married or divorced.
  • Operationalization: Parents marital status was quantified as either high (divorced) or low (married).

Dependent Variable - Percieved Educational Attainment

  • Construct Definition: Perceived educational attainment was defined as the level of education the subject of the story prompt received.
  • Operationalization: Perceived educational attainment was measured in four levels: some high school, graduated high school, some college, and graduated college.

Hypothesis

  • In participants who read about divorced parents, the subject of the readings with high parental income will be perceived to have less education than those with low parental income.

  • In participants who read about married parents, the subject of the readings with high parental income will be perceived to have more education than those with low parental income.

Results

Discussion

Limitations - We were unable to include more levels of our Dependent Variable, so we do not know if the levels presented impacted our results since there was no neutral.

Strengths - Our stories were standardized so that only the independent variables changed between levels: income and divorce.

Conclusion

  • Although our interaction was not significant, we now know that parental income does play a significant role in how people perceive others educational attainment. Our finding is consistent with previous research conducting in educational settings focusing on teachers, showing how these prejudices are prevalent within educational settings as well as daily life.
  • By understanding how these factors impact educational attainment is perceived, we hope to bring more attention to issues in education and with biases against people from different income levels and family constructions.