Childhood Maltreatment and Academic Outcomes in College

Individuals face numerous challenges throughout their lifetimes, and for many this may lead to problematic academic outcomes. More specifically, a history of childhood maltreatment impacts biological and cognitive processes, which can affect levels of academic engagement, perceived academic stress, school connectedness, and overall academic performance. This study investigates the relationship between college students’ self-reported childhood maltreatment and GPA, and seeks to determine if academic engagement (AE), perceived academic stress (PAS), and school connectedness (SC) mediate the relationship between childhood maltreatment and GPA. It was hypothesized that there is a significant relationship between childhood maltreatment and GPA, and that separately, academic engagement, perceived academic stress, and school connectedness will partially mediate the relationship. To test the hypotheses, data was collected from online self-report surveys completed by college students to assess childhood maltreatment, perceived academic stress, school connectedness, and academic engagement (N = 309). The results found that the relationship between childhood maltreatment and GPA was not significant but childhood maltreatment was related to SC, AE, and PAS. Additionally, in models that did not control for the variance explained by the other hypothesized mediators, childhood maltreatment had significant indirect effects on GPA through AE and PAS, but not SC; however, when accounting for other mediators in the model, the individual indirect effects through each specific mediator were not significant. Finally, AE, PAS, and SC together mediated the relationship between childhood maltreatment and GPA. This study establishes that experiences of maltreatment during childhood can negatively impact academic performance in college by decreasing academic engagement and increasing perceived academic stress.