This exploratory study describes high school students' perceptions of their parents' involvement in their education and in relation to school achievement. A new 12-item Parental Involvement Scale was used to measure parents' involvement in curricular and extracurricular activities and using exploratory analyses to estimate the scale's properties. Exploratory analysis resulted in the reduction of the 12 items to 8, with an internal consistency (Cronbach alpha) .82. Grade 12 science students indicated that their less educated parents were involved in activities pertaining to their learning; however, high perceived parental involvement in curricular activities was related to low achievement. It is recommended that further exploratory analyses be undertaken to examine the reported two-dimensional model of the Parental Involvement Scale.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AnastasiA.UrbinaS. (1997) Psychological testing. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
2.
CharterR. A. (1997) Confidence interval procedures for retest, alternate-form, validity, and alpha coefficients. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 84, 1488–1490.
3.
ChavkinN. R. (Ed.) (1993) Families and schools in a pluralistic society. Albany, NY: State Univer. of New York Press.
4.
CicchettiD. V. (1994) Guidelines, criteria, and rules of thumb for evaluating normed and standardized assessment instruments in psychology. Psychological Assessment, 6, 284–290.
5.
CraneJ. (1996) Effects of home environment, SES, and maternal test scores on mathematics achievement. Journal of Educational Research, 89, 305–314.
6.
CronbachL. J. (1951) Coefficient alpha and the internal structure of tests. Psychometrika, 16, 297–334.
7.
EpsteinJ. L. (1986) Parents' reactions to teacher practices of parent involvement. Elementary School Journal, 86, 277–294.
8.
EpsteinJ. L. (1987a) How do we improve programs for parent involvement. Educational Horizons, 66, 58–59.
9.
EpsteinJ. L. (1987b) Parents' involvement: What research says to administrators. Education and Urban Society, 19, 119–136.
10.
FeldtL. S. (1965) The approximate sampling distribution of Kuder-Richardson reliability coefficient twenty. Psychometrika, 30, 357–370.
11.
GonzalezA. R.HolbeinM. F. D.QuilterS. (2002) High school student' goal orientations and their relationship to perceived parenting styles. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 21, 450–470.
12.
GrolnikW. S.RyanR. M.DeciE. L. (1991) Inner resources for school achievement: Motivational mediators of children's perceptions of their parents. Journal of Educational Psychology, 83, 508–517.
13.
HillN. E.CraftS. A. (2003) Parent-school involvement and school performance: Mediated pathways among socioeconomically comparable African American and Euro-American families. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95, 74–83.
14.
Hoover-DempseyK. V.BasslerO. C.BrissieJ. S. (1992) Explorations in parent-school relations. Journal of Educational Research, 85, 287–294.
15.
Hoover-DempseyK. V.SandlerH. M. (1997) Why do parents become involved in their children's education?Review of Educational Research, 67, 3–42.
16.
IzzoC. V.WeissbergR. P.KasprowW. J.FrendrichM. (1999) A longitudinal assessment of teacher perceptions of parent involvement in children's education and school performance. American Journal of Community Psychology, 27, 817–839.
17.
KahnM. J. (2001) Changing science and mathematics achievement: Reflections on policy and planning. Perspectives in Education, 19, 169–176.
18.
LambornS. D.MountsN. S.SteinbergL.DornbuschS. M. (1991) Patterns of competence and adjustment among adolescents from authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent, and neglectful families. Child Development, 62, 1049–1065.
19.
MarconR. A. (1999) Positive relationships between parent school involvement and public school inner-city preschoolers' development and academic performance. School Psychology Review, 28, 395–412.
MerendaP. F. (1997) A guide to the proper use of factor analysis in the conduct and reporting of research: Pitfalls to avoid. Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, 30, 156–164.
22.
MulaikS. A. (1972) The foundations of factor analysis. New York: McGraw Hill.
23.
NunnallyJ. C. (1978) Psychometric theory. (2nd ed.) New York: McGraw Hill.
24.
OnwuegbuzieA. J.DanielL. G. (2002) A framework for reporting and interpreting internal consistency reliability estimates. Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, 35, 89–103.
25.
PaulsonS. E. (1994) Relations of parenting style and parental involvement with ninth-grade students' achievement. Journal of Early Adolescence, 14, 250–267.
26.
StapletonC. D. (1997) Basic concepts and procedures of confirmatory factor analysis. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southwest Educational Research Association, Austin, TX, January.
27.
SteinbergL.LambornS. D.DornbuschS. M.DarlingN. (1992) Impact of parenting practices on adolescent achievement: Authoritative parenting, school involvement, and encouragement to succeed. Child Development, 63, 1266–1281.
28.
TrustyJ. (1998) Family influence on educational expectations of late adolescents. Journal of Educational Research, 91, 260–270.
29.
TrustyJ.LampeR. E. (1997) Relationship of high-school seniors' perceptions of parental involvement and control to seniors' locus of control. Journal of Counseling and Development, 75, 375–384.
30.
WangJ.WildmanL. (1996) The relationship between parental influence and student achievement in seventh grade mathematics. School Science and Mathematics, 96, 395–399.
31.
WatkinsT. J. (1997) Teacher communications, child achievement, and parent traits in parent involvement models. Journal of Educational Research, 91, 4–14.
