The relationship between level of parental education and SAT scores

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Introduction

Background Research

The literature has consistently shown that parent education is an important factor in children’s academic achievement. Many studies have attempted to examine how parenting behaviors, such as the structure of the home environment, influence children’s achievement outcomes. Some say that specific behaviors of parents, such as harsh parenting, nurturing and warmth can greatly influence the children’s mentality leading to higher education achievement. In fact, parent involvement, such as counting the number of parent’s involvement in volunteering, coming to school meetings, or conferences.1 has been shown to be an important variable that positively influences children’s education. Researchers have examined the relationships between parent involvement and children’s education achievement correlate to each other.

There a study involving the correlation between SAT scores and family income by the New York Times. The article explaining the result of the relationship says that the wealthier a student’s family is, the higher the SAT score. They used information from the College Board. Consider the graph below. 

Source: College Board 2

The graph has shown that there is a very strong positive correlation between income and test score.

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Objective

Instead of family incomes, this project will observe the relationship between parents’ education and their children’s SAT scores.

= The SAT test takers’ SAT scores and the highest level of parental education are independent.

= The SAT test takers’ SAT scores and the highest level of parental education are dependent.

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Data Collection

When students take their SAT’s, one of the requirements is to fill out the survey or questionnaires for statistical references. These reports present data for high school graduates in the year of 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 who participated in the SAT Program. Students are counted only once, no matter how often they tested, and only their latest scores and most recent SAT Questionnaire responses are summarized. These reports are considered very highly accurate since the college-bound population is relatively stable from year to year.

Here are the URLs of the SAT total group ...

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