This meta-analysis is designed to test the immigrant paradox hypothesis, which argues that first-generation immigrant students tend to outperform their more acculturated peers. We aim to unpack the complex relation between acculturation and academic performance among immigrant-origin students with attention to methodological and demographic moderators. The review includes 79 independent samples generated from 54 studies, representing 89,827 students (M = 646.24, SD = 862.93) with a mean age of 13.26 (SD = 5.16). We found an overall main effect of 0.04, (p < .001), suggesting a significant, positive correlation between acculturation and academic performance. However, given the significant variation among studies, focused moderator analyses revealed the importance of critical methodological (e.g., type of acculturation measure used, type of academic indicator used, and type of publication) and demographic (e.g., developmental stage, race/ethnicity, urbanicity) factors that moderate the relation between acculturation and school achievement. These results suggest the opposite of the immigrant paradox, that is second-generation (or more acculturated) students seem to perform better than their first-generation (or less acculturated) peers. Moderation analysis, however, revealed that acculturation seems to have no effect on grades, while having a positive effect on test scores. Finally, we found a positive relation between acculturation and academic performance in studies conducted with children and adolescents, but not for young adults.

这项荟萃分析旨在检验移民悖论假说，该假说认为第一代移民学生的表现往往优于他们更适应文化的同龄人。我们的目标是通过关注方法论和人口统计调节因素来解开移民出身学生的文化适应与学业成绩之间的复杂关系。审查包括从 54 项研究中生成的 79 个独立样本，代表 89,827 名学生（M = 646.24，SD  = 862.93），平均年龄为 13.26（SD = 5.16）。我们发现总体主效应为 0.04 (p < .001)，这表明文化适应与学业成绩之间存在显着的正相关关系。然而，鉴于研究之间的显着差异，重点调节分析揭示了关键方法论（例如，使用的文化适应措施类型、使用的学术指标类型和出版物类型）和人口统计学（例如，发育阶段、种族/民族、 urbanicity）调节文化适应与学业成绩之间关系的因素。这些结果表明与移民悖论相反，即第二代（或文化程度更高的）学生似乎比他们的第一代（或文化程度较低的）同龄人表现更好。然而，适度分析表明文化适应似乎对成绩没有影响，同时对考试成绩有积极影响。最后，我们发现在对儿童和青少年进行的研究中，文化适应与学业成绩之间存在正相关关系，但对年轻人则不然。