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Abstract
Research investigating the impact of factors such as gender, socioeconomic status, racial socialization, and academic self-concept on the academic achievement of African American high school students has been of interest to scholars for decades. Previous literature has focused much attention on the relationship of each of these constructs and academic achievement individually. The purpose of this study was to simultaneously assess the relative influence of the predictor variables of gender, socioeconomic status, racial socialization and academic self-concept on the outcome variable of academic achievement of African American high school students. It was hypothesized that there would be statistically significant correlations between all predictor variables and the outcome variable of academic achievement as measured by grade point averages. This hypothesis was analyzed through the use hierarchical regression. The sample for the study was 190 African American students from a rural area in a Mid-Atlantic state.The findings revealed a significant statistical relationship between academic self-concept and academic achievement for the sample. None of the other independent variables were found to be significantly related to the outcome variable of academic achievement.