In light of the gap in the existing literature regarding the effects of participation in various educational activities on occupational performance, the major concern of the study was to determine how the factors of formal educational attainment, work experience, and nonformal educational participation, as mediated by the social psychological variable of individual modernity and the behavioral variable of business practice adoption, contribute to occupational achievement. In the model design, the primary dependent variable was occupational achievement; the intervening variables were business practice adoption and individual modernity; the adult learning attributes were nonformal educational participation and work experience; and the pre-employment condition was formal educational attainment. The study was conducted by means of structured interviews of Mexican American businessmen in the three most populous Mexican American enclaves in Chicago. Although the standardized beta coefficients and the coefficients of determination for the hypothesized paths of influence among the variables revealed a marked lack of predictiveness of many aspects of the model, the study was able to provide evidence of the significance of nonformal educational participation to business practice adoption and, via that mediating variable, to occupational achievement. (Author/JR)