Grit as a Predictor of Academic Achievement Among Street-Connected Boys in Bungoma, Kenya: A Quantitative Study

The purpose of this quantitative, predictive, correlational study was to examine the relationship between street-connected children’s grit while enrolled in Reach International Children’s Center and street-connected children’s grit while living with family of origin. Furthermore, the purpose of this study was to examine hypothesized predictors of rank-ordered academic achievement among street-connected children, recently rescued street-connected children, recently reintegrated street-connected children, and home-connected children. A world phenomenon is currently occurring where children are migrating to the streets in search of shelter, security, and safety; children are migrating to the streets in search of meeting their basic needs. While the factors that cause millions of children to migrate to the streets are numerous, poverty and dysfunctional families appear to be major key factors. As organizations increasingly work to rescue, rehabilitate, educate, and reintegrate street-connected children back into the community, it is critical to examine the relationship of academic achievement among street-connected children. An ordinal logistic regression was used to identify the predictive power of grit and alternative care settings in order to explain academic achievement among 72 street-connected children in Bungoma, Kenya. The overall model fit showed a statistically significant improvement over and above the intercept-only model in predicting the dependent variable. Only the living arrangement variable emerged as a statistically significant predictor of the relationship between academic achievement scores and the linear combination of one’s grit score based on the participants’ alternative care status in Bungoma, Kenya. One’s grit score was not statistically significant. Recommendations for future research include duplicating this study in other communities impacted by street-connected children to generalize the findings further