Study of the Relationship of Social and Cultural Capitals with Academic Motivation of High School Students

The aim of this research was to study the relationship of social and cultural capitals with academic motivation.

It was an applied study in terms of purpose and a descriptive-correlational one in regards to the method.  The statistical population consisted of 14500 high school students of the Ilam province in the school year 2019-2020. The sample included 380 subjects chosen based on Morgan Table by multistage cluster sampling method. The tools of gathering data included the Vallerand Academic Motivation Questionnaire (1992); the social capital used for measurement of state social capital (2015), and the cultural capital self-made questionnaire which was validated based on the opinion of instructors with a reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) of 0.84. SPSS and structural equations in Amos were used to study the research hypotheses based on correlational coefficients and regression.

Findings showed that the social and cultural capitals were significantly related with the academic motivation at (P<0.001, R=0.37) and (P<0.001 and R=0.53). Results of structural equations showed that social capital had direct significant influence on academic motivation (the standard regression coefficient was 0.49). “Cultural capital” with a standard regression coefficient of 0.68 had a direct significant influence on “academic motivation” and its indirect effect through “social capital” on “academic motivation” is 0.25. Altogether both social and cultural capitals directly and indirectly indicated the academic motivation variance at R2= 0.45.

Taking the significant role of the cultural and social capitals in academic motivation found in this study, it seems mandatory to heed to these concepts in the academic system.