Family income, parents’ education, individual characteristics and engagement with school and civic society among adolescents from diverse cultures in Hong Kong

This paper reports the findings of a public policy investigation, supported by the Hong Kong University Grant Council, into the relationships between individual-level factors and the engagement of students from diverse cultures with school and civic society in Hong Kong. Individual-level factors, family monthly income, parents’ education level, gender, and level of study were examined to determine their predicting power on student engagement with school and society. Data were collected from a sample of 5809 students, aged 12 to 19, by employing the modified self-rated school engagement scale and the ICCS 2009 student questionnaires. A significant proportion of the sampled students were of low socio-economic status (SES), in that their family monthly income was reported as being less than 1500 USD. Mainstream Hong Kong Chinese students (HKCS) were studied as a reference group, together with non-mainstream immigrant student groups, namely Non-Chinese Speaking South Asian students (NCS), Chinese Cross-Boundary Students (CBS) who live in Mainland China but commute to Hong Kong for schooling, and Chinese Immigrant Students (CIS) from Mainland China. Confirmatory Factor Analysis was conducted to validate the instruments and yielded satisfactory results. Multiple regressions were performed to determine the predicting power of family income and parents’ education and found their strong predicting power on school engagement and their interest in political discussion with significant others of the mainstream HKCS, but no parallel effects were found on the non-mainstream immigrant students. Recommendations are made for both schools and government agencies towards future policy development in facilitating positive school and civic attitudes and behaviors of all students. Copyright © 2014 Lisbon University.