Demographic Differences in Adolescent Time Attitude Profiles in an Urban High School: A Person-Oriented Analysis Using Model-Based Clustering

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to use model-based clustering to identify adolescent time attitude profiles in a sample of students from an urban high school using Adolescent Time Inventory-Time Attitude (ATI-TA) scores and to examine the association of ATI-TA profiles with demographic variables and grade point average (GPA). Three ATI-TA profiles were identified— Positives, Ambivalent, and Conflicted—two of which were similar to clusters identified in previous studies. Results indicated that gender and grade were not associated with cluster membership. However, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and GPA were related to cluster membership. Although overall effect sizes for socioeconomic status and ethnicity were small, post-hoc analyses suggested that differences among ethnic groups should be investigated further. There were substantial GPA differences between some clusters (Cohen’s d = .36 – 1.27). Future directions for research on adolescent time attitude profiles should include in-depth studies examining the relationship between profile membership and achievement and longitudinal studies to observe whether time attitude profile membership changes over time.