Date of Conferral

2019

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Psychology

Advisor

Mitchell Hicks

Abstract

Residential relocation requiring a change of school enrollment can negatively disrupt academic achievement, extracurricular participation, attendance, and ability to appropriately regulate emotions/behaviors. This disruption impacts military-affiliated students every 2 to 3 years. The purpose of this study was to quantitatively inform Student 2 Student’s (S2S’s) continued development and the Military Child Education Coalition’s (MCEC’s) pursuit of better serving newly relocated students. This will help the program to reach beyond good intentions and mitigate the perils of assuming that benefits occur without quantitative support. The three-factory model of Academic Resiliency was used as the theoretical framework guiding this study. Two American public high schools with similar demographics were requested to provide data for all new 9th through 12th graders, who enrolled in the school district for the first time during the 2018-19 academic year. A Mann-Whitney U was used to compare grade point averages (GPA), attendance percentages, number of extracurricular activities, and number of behavioral referrals for 179 students at a school with S2S to 97 students at a school without S2S. The 2 groups showed statistically significant differences across all 4 dependent variables. For example, the S2S group showed higher levels of extracurricular participation and fewer behavioral referrals than the control group. Additionally, a positive relationship between attendance and GPA was supported for the control group more than the S2S group. Overall, the results of this study quantitatively inform S2S’s continued development and the MCEC’s pursuit of better serving newly relocated students worldwide, which assists to create positive social change.

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