Student Success Series: Family Support

By: Dr. Louis Frisenda, Assistant Vice President, Academic Affairs Enrollment Initiatives, Marymount University

Family Support and Student Success: What the Data Actually Says

Quick message: Families still matter in college. Encouragement, structure, and autonomy support are associated with greater engagement and stronger persistence.

Key takeaways for families

• Attendance is strongly linked to course grades and GPA.
• Student success is shaped by more than academics: motivation, self-efficacy, and support systems matter.
• Family involvement is most effective when it supports independence rather than taking over.

What the research says about attendance

A large meta-analysis found that attendance is strongly associated with both course grades and overall GPA. In the same study, mandatory attendance policies were associated with only a small average grade effect—suggesting that habits and follow-through matter more than rules alone.

• Rules can get students in the room, but they don’t automatically create the behaviors that drive learning: paying attention, taking notes, asking questions, doing the practice, starting assignments early, using feedback, showing up to office hours, etc.
• The big gains come from follow-through—attendance as a habit that signals structure, consistency, and engagement, not attendance as a box-checking requirement.
• A policy can’t fully solve the “why” behind absences (motivation, overwhelm, work schedules, transportation, health, family responsibilities). It can only penalize the outcome.

Success is also about psychosocial and study-skill factors

A major meta-analysis identified meaningful associations between college outcomes and factors such as academic self-efficacy, academic goals, academic-related skills, and perceived social support—above and beyond traditional predictors such as high school GPA, standardized test scores, and socioeconomic status. This is actually the “human side” of academic performance: academic self-efficacy, goals, related skills, and perceived social support. This side of educational success is not a case of “nice to have” variables; each one is uniquely tied to successful outcomes. Research says that traditional predictors do explain a large part of performance; however, they don’t capture the whole story. The psychosocial/skills variables add a real predictive signal to the quest for success.

Belonging and persistence

National engagement work highlights sense of belonging as important because of its relationship to persistence, engagement, and development. Families can support belonging indirectly by encouraging attendance, participation, and help-seeking behaviors that connect students to their campus community.

The best kind of family involvement: autonomy-support

Research on persistence in a demanding science curriculum found that perceived parental autonomy support predicted persistence partly through students’ autonomy. That is a practical takeaway: support the student’s ownership of plans and decisions, while staying consistently encouraging.

References

• Credé, M., Roch, S. G., & Kieszczynka, U. M. (2010). Class attendance in college: A meta-analytic review of the relationship of class attendance with grades and student characteristics. Review of Educational Research, 80(2), 272–295. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654310362998
• Robbins, S. B., Lauver, K., Le, H., Davis, D., Langley, R., & Carlstrom, A. (2004). Do psychosocial and study skill factors predict college outcomes? A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 130(2), 261–288. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.130.2.261
• National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). (2020). A NSSE Data User’s Guide: Sense of Belonging. Indiana University. (Accessed December 22, 2025)
• Ratelle, C. F., Larose, S., Guay, F., & Senécal, C. (2005). Perceptions of parental involvement and support as predictors of college students’ persistence in a science curriculum. Journal of Family Psychology, 19(2), 286–293. https://doi.org/10.1037/0893-3200.19.2.286