The hope of immigrant optimism

Immigrant optimism has been hypothesized to explain the academic resilience of children of immigrants in the face of adversity. Moreover, in much the same way as immigrant optimism has correlated to academic success, psychologists have also found hope to be highly predictive of academic performance. Given these findings in two separate strands of research, what, then, can education leaders and researchers learn from the immigrant experience in order to better support the academic wellbeing of Latino students writ large? This dissertation is comprised of two studies that aim towards first establishing the measurement properties of an instrument used to quantify hope, the Children's Hope Scale, among a Latino sample and then use this measure to examine a more substantive question of hope's relationship with academic outcomes and immigrant generation. Both studies use survey data from a sample of Latino adolescents (n=2,369) who participated in a summer program at one of ten sites across the United States. In the first article, I utilize confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and multiple-group CFA to identify a theoretically sound factor structure; examine the degree of invariance according to immigrant generation, documentation status, gender, and nationality; and establish evidence of concurrent validity. My findings suggest the Children's Hope Scale is a reliable and appropriate instrument to examine hope levels among Latino youth.

In the second article, I use multiple group structural equation modeling to examine hope's effect on academic engagement, GPA, English AP/Honors enrollment, educational aspirations, and post-high school plans – by immigrant generation and documentation status. My findings suggest that there is no difference in hope among the immigrant generations, but indicate that undocumented students are more hopeful than their documented counterparts. In addition, there was no evidence of differences by immigrant generation or documentation status in academic outcomes. Regardless, hope consistently had a significant effect on all academic outcomes. Lastly, there was some evidence of indirect effect of documentation status on academic outcomes via hope; undocumented youth were more hopeful, on average, and those higher levels of hope corresponded to more positive academic outcomes. I conclude with implications for research and program outreach.