Congratulations to Dr. Jess Garcia who just defended her dissertation titled "School Connectedness as a Protective Factor to the Consequences of Adolescent Dating Violence on Academic Achievement and Attainment." Dr. Garcia has been mentored by Dr. Holly Foster throughout her PhD. Dr. Garcia's defense was chaired by Dr. Mary Campbell while Dr. Pat Goldsmith, Dr. Theresa Morris, and Dr. Nancy Downing (Forensic Nursing) served as committee members.
Dating violence at any point in the life course can have detrimental effects, however there is research showing that during adolescence, consequences on academic achievement may be particularly salient. On the other hand, school connectedness, or “students’ belief that peers and adults in the school support, value, and care about their individual well-being as well as their academic progress,” (Division of Population Health 2024) has been shown to protect against many different consequences of violence including academic success, and physical and mental health outcomes. Therefore, the purpose of Dr. Garcia's dissertation is twofold. First is to examine the mechanism through which one specific type of victimization, adolescent dating violence (ADV), affects academic achievement and attainment. The second is to identify and discuss a possible protective factor, school connectedness. Dr. Garcia utilized linear regression with OLS estimators and logistic regression to explore the relationships between ADV, academic achievement/attainment, and school connectedness. Mediation and moderation analyses were conducted for several variables of interest including school connectedness, gender, and academic self-concept.
Analyses showed that ADV has a negative relationship with academic attainment and that this relationship is stronger for male students than female students. The relationship between ADV victimization and academic achievement was not significant. No moderation or mediation effect of this relationship was found for academic self-concept. Further, school connectedness mediated the relationship between ADV and academic attainment, explaining about 20% of the relationship for aggregated physical and sexual ADV.
Congratulations, Dr. Jess Garcia!