The Relationships Between Expectancy-Value Beliefs, Communal Value Beliefs, Family Identity, and Academic Persistence Among First- and Continuing-Generation College Students

First-generation college students (students for whom neither parent has a 4-year college degree) have lower college graduation rates than their continuing-generation peers (Cahalan et al., 2021; Fry, 2021). First-generation students may experience barriers to higher education, leading to lower levels of academic achievement motivation for college. Two of these barriers may include 1) cultural mismatch (Stephens, Fryberg, et al., 2012) with colleges via communal value (a value set that emphasizes community and family over the self) and 2) a strong sense of family identity, which lends itself to perceived family obligations (Fuligni et al., 2007). To examine the relationships between communal value, family identity, and academic persistence within the framework of situated expectancy-value theory (SEVT; Eccles & Wigfield, 2020), I surveyed 125 (41 first-generation, 84 continuing-generation) undergraduates at a large, diversely populated, research university. The survey included items regarding participants’ SEVT beliefs, communal value beliefs, family identity, and persistence intentions at two time points in the fall 2024 semester. Institutional enrollment data for the participants were also collected to assess behavioral persistence. The results suggested that first- and continuing-generation students did not significantly differ on any measure, nor did generational status moderate the relationships between either communal value and persistence or family identity and persistence. Further, the survey measures did not relate significantly to persistence intention or behavioral persistence, with the exception of expectancies for success and attainment value relating to persistence intention at the first time point. The non-significant findings may have been the result of an underpowered sample that was too small to detect small-to-moderate effects, as well as short-term longitudinal persistence measures which lacked sufficient variability as a dependent measure.