The influence of student, family, and school factors on students' mathematics achievement: a hierarchical multiple regression analysis

Mathematics achievement is widely recognized as an important indicator of educational quality and students' academic success. Previous studies have demonstrated that mathematics achievement is influenced by various student, family, and school factors; however, the relative contribution of these factors remains inconsistent across educational contexts. This study aimed to examine the influence of student, family, and school factors on elementary school students' mathematics achievement using hierarchical multiple regression analysis. A quantitative ex post facto design was employed using secondary data from 240 elementary school students representing schools in urban, suburban, medium-sized city, and rural areas. Student factors included early numeracy tasks, liking for mathematics, engaging teaching, confidence in mathematics, sense of school belonging, and bullying experiences. Family factors comprised parental educational level, occupational type, parental perceptions of school performance, and parental attitudes toward mathematics, while school factors included instructional resource shortages, academic emphasis, and school discipline. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, assumption testing, and hierarchical multiple regression with IBM SPSS Statistics 26. The findings indicated that the final regression model explained 13.0% of the variance in mathematics achievement (R² = .130; Adjusted R² = .076) and was statistically significant (F(14,225) = 2.408, p = .004). Student liking for mathematics and school resource-related factors emerged as significant predictors, whereas family factors did not contribute significantly after controlling for student and school variables. These findings suggest that improving mathematics achievement requires greater emphasis on enhancing students' engagement with mathematics and strengthening instructional quality and school learning environments rather than relying solely on family characteristics. The study provides empirical evidence supporting the ecological perspective that mathematics achievement is jointly shaped by factors operating at multiple levels of students' learning environments.