A New Scale to Measure Adolescent Reports of Academic Support by Mothers, Fathers, Teachers, and Friends in Latino Immigrant Families

Abstract

The purpose of this article was to report factor structures, reliability, and validity of the Significant Other Academic Support Scale from two different Latino samples of Mexican and Central American origin youth. Self-report data were collected from 394 Mexican and 220 Central American youth from immigrant families living in Los Angeles. Exploratory factor analyses indicated that the same four factors (i.e., academic support by mothers, fathers, teachers, and friends) emerged in both the Mexican and Central American samples. Also, high internal consistency reliabilities were found for all four subscales in both samples. The initial evidence of construct validity was provided through the tests of convergent validity, discriminant validity, and predictive validity.