Perceptions of Parental Involvement and Autonomy Support: Their Relations with Self-Regulation, Academic Performance, Substance Use and Resilience among Adolescents

Three important developmental tasks for adolescents in the U.S. are doing reasonably well in schools, behaving in a manner that does not disrupt others, and resisting the urge to use alcohol and other drugs (Masten, 2001; Masten & Reed, 2002). This study examined how parental involvement and parental autonomy support were related to these three psychosocial outcomes in adolescence, i.e., academic performance, disruptive behavior and substance use. Additionally, this study tested whether self-regulation mediated the effects of parental involvement and autonomy support on these outcomes. Moreover, this study examined the relations among parenting practices, self-regulation and resilience, i.e., good adaptation in spite of adversity. Past research has found that perception of parental involvement and autonomy support are positively related to academic performance (Grolnick, Ryan, & Deci, 1991; Grolnick & Slowiaczek, 1994; Soenens & Vansteenkiste, 2005). Parental involvement is the extent to which parents are interested in, knowledgeable about, and willing to take an active role in the day-to-day activities of their children. Parental autonomy support is the extent to which parents value and use techniques that facilitate independent problem solving, choice, and self-determination in their children. Specifically, perception of greater parental involvement is associated with higher standardized achievement scores, higher teacher rated competence, and better school grade (Grolnick et al., 1991; Grolnick & Slowiaczek, 1994). Perception of greater parental autonomy support is related to higher grade point average, higher teacher-rated competence, more active job search behavior, and a strong vocational identity (Grolnick et al., 1991; Soenens & Vansteenkiste, 2005). This study examined the effects of perceived parental involvement and autonomy support on academic performance, classroom disruptive behavior and substance use in adolescence. Classroom disruptive behavior and substance use are two important psychosocial outcomes that have not been studied in previous research on perceived parental involvement and autonomy support (Grolnick et al., 1991; Grolnick & Slowiaczek, 1994; Soenens & Vansteenkiste, 2005). Additionally, this study examined how perceived parental involvement and autonomy support were related to resilience, i.e., positive adaptation in spite of adversity (Luthar, Cicchetti, & Becker, 2000; Masten, 2001). I compared the effects of perceived parental involvement and autonomy support on psychosocial outcomes between high-risk and low-risk students: those who were in challenging circumstances (i.e., having low parental education and low parental acculturation) and those who were not. Past research has shown that low parental education and acculturation were correlated with a number of poor outcomes in children and adolescents such as low academic performance (Blair, Blair & Madamba, 1999; Farver, Bhadha, & Narang, 2002), more substance use (Conway, Swendsen, Dierker, Canino & Merikangas, 2007; Rodriguez, Henderson, Rowe, 2007) and a high frequency of sexual behavior (Wills, Gibbons, Gerrard, Murray & Brody, 2003). Parenting practices and characteristics of parent-child interactions have been linked to behavioral problems, substance use (Hawkins, Catalano, & Miller, 1992; Petraitis, Flay, & Miller, 1995) and resilience (Luthar & Zelazo, 2003; Masten & Reed, 2002). Factors such as parents' permissiveness, inconsistent and unclear behavioral limits, unrealistic parental expectations, negative communication patterns, and lack of parental monitoring were associated with earlier initiation and higher rates of drug use (Baumrind, 1991; Chilcoat & Anthony, 1996). Greater perceived parental support and responsiveness together with high parental expectations were associated with resilience in children and youth (Forgatch & DeGarno, 1999; Masten & Reed, 2002). …

[1]  B. B. Brown,et al.  Beyond the Classroom: Why School Reform Has Failed and What Parents Need to Do , 1996 .

[2]  Brian K. Barber,et al.  Violating the self: Parental psychological control of children and adolescents. , 2002 .

[3]  B. Flay,et al.  Reviewing theories of adolescent substance use: organizing pieces in the puzzle. , 1995, Psychological bulletin.

[4]  Robert C MacCallum,et al.  2001 Presidential Address: Working with Imperfect Models , 2003, Multivariate behavioral research.

[5]  M. Slowiaczek,et al.  Parents' involvement in children's schooling: a multidimensional conceptualization and motivational model. , 1994, Child development.

[6]  Phil A. Silva,et al.  Staying in School Protects Boys with Poor Self-regulation in Childhood from Later Crime: A Longitudinal Study , 1999 .

[7]  Barbara M. Byrne,et al.  Structural equation modeling with AMOS , 2010 .

[8]  Parenting through change: an effective prevention program for single mothers. , 1999, Journal of consulting and clinical psychology.

[9]  D. Baumrind.  The Influence of Parenting Style on Adolescent Competence and Substance Use , 1991 .

[10]  A. Tomarken,et al.  Potential problems with "well fitting" models. , 2003, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[11]  Jean Johnson.  Getting By: What American Teenagers Really Think about Their Schools. A Report from Public Agenda. , 1997 .

[12]  J. H. Steiger.  Statistically based tests for the number of common factors , 1980 .

[13]  R. Ryan,et al.  Autonomy in children's learning: an experimental and individual difference investigation. , 1987, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[14]  P. Bentler.  Fit Indexes, Lagrange Multipliers, Constraint Changes and Incomplete Data in Structural Models. , 1990, Multivariate behavioral research.

[15]  Nancy Eisenberg,et al.  Effortful control: Relations with emotion regulation, adjustment, and socialization in childhood. , 2004 .

[16]  Marianne Miserandino,et al.  Children Who Do Well in School: Individual Differences in Perceived Competence and Autonomy in Above-Average Children , 1996 .

[17]  M. Posner,et al.  A psychobiological approach to the development of temperament. , 1994 .

[18]  P. Bentler,et al.  Significance Tests and Goodness of Fit in the Analysis of Covariance Structures , 1980 .

[19]  A. Masten.  Ordinary magic. Resilience processes in development. , 2001, The American psychologist.

[20]  J. Anthony,et al.  Impact of parent monitoring on initiation of drug use through late childhood. , 1996, Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

[21]  R. MacCallum,et al.  Applications of structural equation modeling in psychological research. , 2000, Annual review of psychology.

[22]  S. Luthar.  Resilience and Vulnerability: Adaptation in the Context of Childhood Adversities , 2003 .

[23]  J. Connell,et al.  What motivates children's behavior and emotion? Joint effects of perceived control and autonomy in the academic domain. , 1993, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[24]  Edward L. Deci,et al.  Internalization within the family: The self-determination theory perspective. , 1997 .

[25]  J. J. Cutuli,et al.  Resilience in Development , 2009 .

[26]  K. Merikangas,et al.  Psychiatric comorbidity and acculturation stress among Puerto Rican substance abusers. , 2007, American journal of preventive medicine.

[27]  W. Grolnick.  The Psychology of Parental Control: How Well-meant Parenting Backfires , 2002 .

[28]  R. Ryan,et al.  Perceived locus of causality and internalization: examining reasons for acting in two domains. , 1989, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[29]  H. Liddle,et al.  Acculturation and Drug Use Among Dually Diagnosed Hispanic Adolescents , 2007, Journal of ethnicity in substance abuse.

[30]  F. Gibbons,et al.  Family communication and religiosity related to substance use and sexual behavior in early adolescence: a test for pathways through self-control and prototype perceptions. , 2003, Psychology of addictive behaviors : journal of the Society of Psychologists in Addictive Behaviors.

[31]  S. Blair,et al.  Racial/Ethnic Differences in High School Students’ Academic Performance: Understanding the Interweave of Social Class and Ethnicity in the Family Context , 1999 .

[32]  L. Tucker,et al.  A reliability coefficient for maximum likelihood factor analysis , 1973 .

[33]  G. Kochanska,et al.  Effortful control in early childhood: continuity and change, antecedents, and implications for social development. , 2000, Developmental psychology.

[34]  M. Sobel.  Asymptotic Confidence Intervals for Indirect Effects in Structural Equation Models , 1982 .

[35]  Richard A. Fabes,et al.  The relations of children's dispositional empathy-related responding to their emotionality, regulation, and social functioning. , 1996 .

[36]  S. West,et al.  A comparison of methods to test mediation and other intervening variable effects. , 2002, Psychological methods.

[37]  M. Rothbart,et al.  Revision of the Early Adolescent Temperament Questionnaire , 2006 .

[38]  Joan E. Grusec,et al.  Parenting and children's internalization of values : a handbook of contemporary theory , 1997 .

[39]  W. Damon,et al.  Social, emotional, and personality development , 1998 .

[40]  J. Farver,et al.  Acculturation and Psychological Functioning in Asian Indian Adolescents , 2002 .

[41]  G. Kochanska,et al.  Effortful control as a personality characteristic of young children: antecedents, correlates, and consequences. , 2003, Journal of personality.

[42]  M. Vansteenkiste,et al.  Antecedents and Outcomes of Self-Determination in 3 Life Domains: The Role of Parents' and Teachers' Autonomy Support , 2005 .

[43]  M. Reiser,et al.  Parental reactions to children's negative emotions: longitudinal relations to quality of children's social functioning. , 1999, Child development.

[44]  Matthew S. Fritz,et al.  Mediation analysis. , 2019, Annual review of psychology.

[45]  Edward L. Deci,et al.  Inner resources for school achievement : motivational mediators of children's perceptions of their parents , 1991 .

[46]  A. Tomarken,et al.  Structural equation modeling: strengths, limitations, and misconceptions. , 2005, Annual review of clinical psychology.

[47]  Anita Sethi,et al.  The role of strategic attention deployment in development of self-regulation: predicting preschoolers' delay of gratification from mother-toddler interactions. , 2000 .

[48]  R. Ryan,et al.  Parent Styles Associated with Children's Self-Regulation and Competence in School. , 1989 .

[49]  G. Kochanska,et al.  The development of self-regulation in the first four years of life. , 2001, Child development.

[50]  K. Vohs,et al.  Handbook of self-regulation : research, theory, and applications , 2004 .

[51]  P. Bentler,et al.  Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis : Conventional criteria versus new alternatives , 1999 .

[52]  S. Luthar,et al.  The construct of resilience: a critical evaluation and guidelines for future work. , 2000, Child development.

[53]  C. R. Snyder,et al.  Handbook of positive psychology , 2002 .

[54]  S. Luthar,et al.  Research on resilience: An integrative review , 2003 .

[55]  R. Catalano,et al.  Risk and protective factors for alcohol and other drug problems in adolescence and early adulthood: implications for substance abuse prevention. , 1992, Psychological bulletin.

[56]  J. Bates,et al.  Temperament: Individual differences at the interface of biology and behavior. , 1994 .