Journal of Adolescence 37 (2014) 387–389
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Adolescence journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jado
International note: Parenting, academic achievement and problem behaviour among Chinese adolescents Haibin Li a, *, Richard Walker b, Derrick Armstrong b a b
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore University of Sydney, Australia
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Available online 20 March 2014
In light of differing findings regarding the relations between parenting and adolescent academic/behavioural outcomes and the dearth of such research in a Chinese context, we conducted research to examine the relationship between parental supervision/attachment and academic achievement/problem behaviour among mainland Chinese adolescents. In the study, 636 Grade 11 students completed a questionnaire comprising parenting and problem behaviour variables complemented by academic achievement (GPA) data drawn from school records. The study found that the relations between parenting (parental supervision and attachment) and Chinese adolescents’ academic and behavioural outcomes are very weak. Ó 2014 The Foundation for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Parental supervision Attachment Behaviour Achievement Adolescents Chinese
Introduction In the past several decades, an abundance of research on adolescents in Western countries has investigated the relations between parental variables and academic/behavioural outcomes. However, the empirical research, despite ample theoretical study, has yielded controversial results: some studies have reported that parenting is highly and positively associated with the adolescent outcomes (e.g., Rankin & Wells, 1990) whereas others reported that the relations are not obvious (e.g., Soenens, Vansteenkiste, Luyckx, & Goossens, 2006; Stattin & Kerr, 2000) – some argued that monitoring and surveillance may be not the best prescription for parental behaviour (e.g., Stattin & Kerr, 2000). For example, Mau (1997) found that the more controlling and helping parents were in their children’s school work, the less likely their children were to perform well. Goldstein (1986) even found that high parental supervision was associated with lower achievement among 12–17 year old white adolescents. In addition to the inconsistent findings on the relations between parenting and adolescent outcomes, a significant shortcoming is evident in the current body of work. Though social control theory has emphasized that parents exert their influences on children in two ways, control and attachment (Hirschi, 1969; Rankin & Wells, 1990; Soenens et al., 2006), little empirical research has integrated the two dimensions of parenting into one theoretical framework to examine the relationship of parenting to adolescent outcomes, and the theory has been rarely tested with non-Western samples, especially Chinese born and raised in China.
* Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (H. Li). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2014.02.014 0140-1971/Ó 2014 The Foundation for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
388
H. Li et al. / Journal of Adolescence 37 (2014) 387–389
Table 1 Descriptive statistics and intercorrelations among the major variables. Variables
Mean
SD
Range
1
2
3
4
1. 2. 3. 4.
3.03 3.01 0.76 1.57
.55 .65 1.21 1.20
1.23–4 1–4 0–7 0–4
– .29*** .25*** .04
– 14*** .05
– .25***
–
Parental supervision Parental attachment Problem behaviour Academic achievement
Note: **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05, ***p < 0.001.
To address these gaps and limitations in the literature, the present study attempted to explore the relations between parenting (supervision and attachment) and academic and behavioural outcomes (the two outcomes are the main indicators for university admission) in a Chinese context. Methods Participants The sample consisted of 636 students (376 boys, 260 girls), who were recruited from four high schools, situated in three districts (large city-29%, medium-sized city-46%, and rural area-25%) in eastern China. These participants were enrolled in the 11th grade and ranged in age from 15 years to 19 years (Mean ¼ 16.8, SD ¼ 0.79). Measures In the study, parenting and behavioural variables were originally from the On Track Youth Lifestyles survey (Armstrong et al., 2005). These scales in the On Track Youth Lifestyles survey and the current study have been shown to be clearly internally consistent (all a > .74). Parental supervision Parental supervision was measured by 8 items, which were rated on a 4-point scale, anchoring from “1 ¼ strongly disagree” to “4 ¼ strongly agree”. A low score revealed an absence of supervision and a high score indicated the presence of supervision. Parental attachment The parental attachment scale included 6 items. All items had 4-point responses from “1 ¼ strongly disagree” to “4 ¼ strongly agree”. A low score indicated a lack of parental attachment and a high score revealed adequate parental attachment. Problem behaviour Student’s problem behaviours were measured by 12 items which cover 7 categories, namely truancy, use of alcohol and cigarettes, and stealing, receiving stolen goods, attacking, vandalizing. Responses from the questions in this study were recoded into a binary response. “0” was coded if the respondent had never committed the problem behaviour, and “1” was recoded if the student had behaved in this way once or more. The number of problem behaviours was coded on an ordinal scale ranging from 0 (no problem behaviour) to 7 (7 problem behaviours). Academic achievement Students’ grade point average (GPA) was used as a measure of academic achievement. The first semester mid-term examination results were obtained from school records. The overall grade was coded on an ordinal five-point scale ranging from 0 to 4, with M ¼ 1.57, SD ¼ 1.20. Results The descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation, and range) on the main variables are reported in Table 1. On average, Chinese adolescents received above average levels of parental supervision (mean is higher than the mid-point value 2.62) and parental attachment (mean is higher than the mid-point value 2.5). The mean grade (GPA) was 1.57 with a high score being 4 while the mean score for the behaviour variable was 0.76 (less than 1 problem behaviour). Both parental supervision and attachment were negatively correlated with problem behaviour, but not correlated with academic achievement. Two sets of hierarchical multiple regressions were conducted to explore the relations between parental supervision/ attachment and two outcomes (see Table 2). As can be seen from Table 2, we found that after controlling for gender, parental
H. Li et al. / Journal of Adolescence 37 (2014) 387–389
389
Table 2 Hierarchical regression results predicting behavioural and academic outcomes (standardized betas). Step predictor
Problem behaviour DR2
Academic achievement DR2
1. Gender 2. Parental attachment 3. Parental supervision Total R2 Overall F
.11*** .03*** .02*** .16*** 16.53***
.03*** .00 .00 .03 .02
Note: **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05, ***p < 0.001.
attachment and supervision were not predictors of academic achievement, but were predictors of problem behaviour. They explained an additional 5% of the variance for behaviour. Discussion Overall, when Chinese children are in their adolescence, the relation between parenting (supervision and attachment) and adolescents’ developmental outcomes is weak, which is consistent with some of previous findings (e.g., Jeynes, 2007; Magoon & Ingersoll, 2006; Mau, 1997; Wang, Qiao, Hong, & Zhang, 2002). There appear to be three possible explanations for the results obtained in this study. Firstly, as previous Western research (e.g., Jang & Krohn, 1995; Wang, Dishion, Stormshak, & Willett, 2011) has shown, parenting is a strong predictor of behaviour and academic achievement in general. However, with the increase in demands for independence, its significance decreases generally over time. Consequently, the results obtained in this study may be due to the older age of the adolescents in the study. Secondly, Chinese high school students’ school day is long (sometimes from 7 am to 9 pm), and therefore they have to spend lots of their time in school (Xinhua, 2009). Consequently they may be exhausted and have no energy to engage in problem behaviours (Li, 2011; Li, Martin, Armstrong, & Walker, 2011). Also, it is possible that during adolescence, other factors (e.g., teachers/peer influence, or self control) rather than parenting play important roles in influencing student achievement and problem behaviours (Cheung & Cheung, 2008). Thirdly, such findings are also explainable in the following way: parents may have close supervision of their children’s behaviours and activities only when adolescents experience either behaviour problem or poor grades. If this is the case, parental supervision might have either a weak association, or even no association, with behaviour and grades. In the study, we need to note that, parenting was only measured by two aspects: supervision and attachment, which indicated that the results are limited to the particular aspects of parenting, rather than parenting as a whole. References Armstrong, D., Hine, J., Hacking, S., Armaos, R., Jones, R., Klessinger, N., et al. (2005). Children, risk and crime: The on track youth lifestyles surveys. London: Home Office. Cheung, N. W. T., & Cheung, Y. W. (2008). Self-control, social factors, and delinquency: a test of the general theory of crime among adolescents in Hong Kong. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 37, 412–430. Goldstein, H. S. (1986). Conduct problems, parental supervision, and cognitive development of 12- to 17-year-olds. Psychological Reports, 59(2), 651–658. Hirschi, T. (1969). Causes of delinquency. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Jang, S. J., & Krohn, M. D. (1995). Developmental patterns of sex differences in delinquency among African American adolescents: a test of the sex-invariance hypothesis. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 11(2), 195–222. Jeynes, W. H. (2007). The relationship between parental involvement and urban secondary school student academic achievement: a meta-analysis. Urban Education, 42, 82–110. Li, H. (Ed.). (2011). Exploring resilience among Chinese adolescents: A mixed-method study. Cologne, Germany: Lambert Academic Press. Li, H., Martin, A., Armstrong, D., & Walker, W. (2011). Risk, protection, and resilience in Chinese adolescents: a psycho-social study. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 14, 269–282. Magoon, M. E., & Ingersoll, G. M. (2006). Parental modeling, attachment, and supervision as moderators of adolescent gambling. Journal of Gambling Studies, 22(1), 1–22. Mau, W. C. (1997). Parental influences on the high school students’ academic achievement: a comparison of Asian immigrants, Asian Americans, and white Americans. Psychology in the Schools, 34(3), 267–277. Rankin, J. H., & Wells, L. E. (1990). The effect of parental attachments and direct controls on delinquency. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 27, 140–165. Soenens, B., Vansteenkiste, M., Luyckx, K., & Goossens, L. (2006). Parenting and adolescent problem behavior: an integrated model with adolescent selfdisclosure and perceived parental knowledge as intervening variables. Developmental Psychology, 42(2), 305–318. Stattin, H., & Kerr, M. (2000). Parental monitoring: a reinterpretation. Child Development, 71, 1072–1085. Wang, M.-T., Dishion, T. J., Stormshak, E. A., & Willett, J. B. (2011). Trajectories of family management practices and early adolescent behavioral outcomes. Developmental Psychology, 47(5), 1324–1341. Wang, G. T., Qiao, H., Hong, S., & Zhang, J. (2002). Adolescent social bond, self-control and deviant behavior in China. International Journal of Contemporary Sociology, 39(1), 52–68. Xinhua. (2009). Survey: Chinese high school students study more [Cited 24 Mar 2009]. Available from URL http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-03/24/ content_7610273.htm.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Adolescence journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jado
International note: Parenting, academic achievement and problem behaviour among Chinese adolescents Haibin Li a, *, Richard Walker b, Derrick Armstrong b a b
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore University of Sydney, Australia
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Available online 20 March 2014
In light of differing findings regarding the relations between parenting and adolescent academic/behavioural outcomes and the dearth of such research in a Chinese context, we conducted research to examine the relationship between parental supervision/attachment and academic achievement/problem behaviour among mainland Chinese adolescents. In the study, 636 Grade 11 students completed a questionnaire comprising parenting and problem behaviour variables complemented by academic achievement (GPA) data drawn from school records. The study found that the relations between parenting (parental supervision and attachment) and Chinese adolescents’ academic and behavioural outcomes are very weak. Ó 2014 The Foundation for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Parental supervision Attachment Behaviour Achievement Adolescents Chinese
Introduction In the past several decades, an abundance of research on adolescents in Western countries has investigated the relations between parental variables and academic/behavioural outcomes. However, the empirical research, despite ample theoretical study, has yielded controversial results: some studies have reported that parenting is highly and positively associated with the adolescent outcomes (e.g., Rankin & Wells, 1990) whereas others reported that the relations are not obvious (e.g., Soenens, Vansteenkiste, Luyckx, & Goossens, 2006; Stattin & Kerr, 2000) – some argued that monitoring and surveillance may be not the best prescription for parental behaviour (e.g., Stattin & Kerr, 2000). For example, Mau (1997) found that the more controlling and helping parents were in their children’s school work, the less likely their children were to perform well. Goldstein (1986) even found that high parental supervision was associated with lower achievement among 12–17 year old white adolescents. In addition to the inconsistent findings on the relations between parenting and adolescent outcomes, a significant shortcoming is evident in the current body of work. Though social control theory has emphasized that parents exert their influences on children in two ways, control and attachment (Hirschi, 1969; Rankin & Wells, 1990; Soenens et al., 2006), little empirical research has integrated the two dimensions of parenting into one theoretical framework to examine the relationship of parenting to adolescent outcomes, and the theory has been rarely tested with non-Western samples, especially Chinese born and raised in China.
* Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (H. Li). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2014.02.014 0140-1971/Ó 2014 The Foundation for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
388
H. Li et al. / Journal of Adolescence 37 (2014) 387–389
Table 1 Descriptive statistics and intercorrelations among the major variables. Variables
Mean
SD
Range
1
2
3
4
1. 2. 3. 4.
3.03 3.01 0.76 1.57
.55 .65 1.21 1.20
1.23–4 1–4 0–7 0–4
– .29*** .25*** .04
– 14*** .05
– .25***
–
Parental supervision Parental attachment Problem behaviour Academic achievement
Note: **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05, ***p < 0.001.
To address these gaps and limitations in the literature, the present study attempted to explore the relations between parenting (supervision and attachment) and academic and behavioural outcomes (the two outcomes are the main indicators for university admission) in a Chinese context. Methods Participants The sample consisted of 636 students (376 boys, 260 girls), who were recruited from four high schools, situated in three districts (large city-29%, medium-sized city-46%, and rural area-25%) in eastern China. These participants were enrolled in the 11th grade and ranged in age from 15 years to 19 years (Mean ¼ 16.8, SD ¼ 0.79). Measures In the study, parenting and behavioural variables were originally from the On Track Youth Lifestyles survey (Armstrong et al., 2005). These scales in the On Track Youth Lifestyles survey and the current study have been shown to be clearly internally consistent (all a > .74). Parental supervision Parental supervision was measured by 8 items, which were rated on a 4-point scale, anchoring from “1 ¼ strongly disagree” to “4 ¼ strongly agree”. A low score revealed an absence of supervision and a high score indicated the presence of supervision. Parental attachment The parental attachment scale included 6 items. All items had 4-point responses from “1 ¼ strongly disagree” to “4 ¼ strongly agree”. A low score indicated a lack of parental attachment and a high score revealed adequate parental attachment. Problem behaviour Student’s problem behaviours were measured by 12 items which cover 7 categories, namely truancy, use of alcohol and cigarettes, and stealing, receiving stolen goods, attacking, vandalizing. Responses from the questions in this study were recoded into a binary response. “0” was coded if the respondent had never committed the problem behaviour, and “1” was recoded if the student had behaved in this way once or more. The number of problem behaviours was coded on an ordinal scale ranging from 0 (no problem behaviour) to 7 (7 problem behaviours). Academic achievement Students’ grade point average (GPA) was used as a measure of academic achievement. The first semester mid-term examination results were obtained from school records. The overall grade was coded on an ordinal five-point scale ranging from 0 to 4, with M ¼ 1.57, SD ¼ 1.20. Results The descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation, and range) on the main variables are reported in Table 1. On average, Chinese adolescents received above average levels of parental supervision (mean is higher than the mid-point value 2.62) and parental attachment (mean is higher than the mid-point value 2.5). The mean grade (GPA) was 1.57 with a high score being 4 while the mean score for the behaviour variable was 0.76 (less than 1 problem behaviour). Both parental supervision and attachment were negatively correlated with problem behaviour, but not correlated with academic achievement. Two sets of hierarchical multiple regressions were conducted to explore the relations between parental supervision/ attachment and two outcomes (see Table 2). As can be seen from Table 2, we found that after controlling for gender, parental
H. Li et al. / Journal of Adolescence 37 (2014) 387–389
389
Table 2 Hierarchical regression results predicting behavioural and academic outcomes (standardized betas). Step predictor
Problem behaviour DR2
Academic achievement DR2
1. Gender 2. Parental attachment 3. Parental supervision Total R2 Overall F
.11*** .03*** .02*** .16*** 16.53***
.03*** .00 .00 .03 .02
Note: **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05, ***p < 0.001.
attachment and supervision were not predictors of academic achievement, but were predictors of problem behaviour. They explained an additional 5% of the variance for behaviour. Discussion Overall, when Chinese children are in their adolescence, the relation between parenting (supervision and attachment) and adolescents’ developmental outcomes is weak, which is consistent with some of previous findings (e.g., Jeynes, 2007; Magoon & Ingersoll, 2006; Mau, 1997; Wang, Qiao, Hong, & Zhang, 2002). There appear to be three possible explanations for the results obtained in this study. Firstly, as previous Western research (e.g., Jang & Krohn, 1995; Wang, Dishion, Stormshak, & Willett, 2011) has shown, parenting is a strong predictor of behaviour and academic achievement in general. However, with the increase in demands for independence, its significance decreases generally over time. Consequently, the results obtained in this study may be due to the older age of the adolescents in the study. Secondly, Chinese high school students’ school day is long (sometimes from 7 am to 9 pm), and therefore they have to spend lots of their time in school (Xinhua, 2009). Consequently they may be exhausted and have no energy to engage in problem behaviours (Li, 2011; Li, Martin, Armstrong, & Walker, 2011). Also, it is possible that during adolescence, other factors (e.g., teachers/peer influence, or self control) rather than parenting play important roles in influencing student achievement and problem behaviours (Cheung & Cheung, 2008). Thirdly, such findings are also explainable in the following way: parents may have close supervision of their children’s behaviours and activities only when adolescents experience either behaviour problem or poor grades. If this is the case, parental supervision might have either a weak association, or even no association, with behaviour and grades. In the study, we need to note that, parenting was only measured by two aspects: supervision and attachment, which indicated that the results are limited to the particular aspects of parenting, rather than parenting as a whole. References Armstrong, D., Hine, J., Hacking, S., Armaos, R., Jones, R., Klessinger, N., et al. (2005). Children, risk and crime: The on track youth lifestyles surveys. London: Home Office. Cheung, N. W. T., & Cheung, Y. W. (2008). Self-control, social factors, and delinquency: a test of the general theory of crime among adolescents in Hong Kong. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 37, 412–430. Goldstein, H. S. (1986). Conduct problems, parental supervision, and cognitive development of 12- to 17-year-olds. Psychological Reports, 59(2), 651–658. Hirschi, T. (1969). Causes of delinquency. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Jang, S. J., & Krohn, M. D. (1995). Developmental patterns of sex differences in delinquency among African American adolescents: a test of the sex-invariance hypothesis. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 11(2), 195–222. Jeynes, W. H. (2007). The relationship between parental involvement and urban secondary school student academic achievement: a meta-analysis. Urban Education, 42, 82–110. Li, H. (Ed.). (2011). Exploring resilience among Chinese adolescents: A mixed-method study. Cologne, Germany: Lambert Academic Press. Li, H., Martin, A., Armstrong, D., & Walker, W. (2011). Risk, protection, and resilience in Chinese adolescents: a psycho-social study. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 14, 269–282. Magoon, M. E., & Ingersoll, G. M. (2006). Parental modeling, attachment, and supervision as moderators of adolescent gambling. Journal of Gambling Studies, 22(1), 1–22. Mau, W. C. (1997). Parental influences on the high school students’ academic achievement: a comparison of Asian immigrants, Asian Americans, and white Americans. Psychology in the Schools, 34(3), 267–277. Rankin, J. H., & Wells, L. E. (1990). The effect of parental attachments and direct controls on delinquency. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 27, 140–165. Soenens, B., Vansteenkiste, M., Luyckx, K., & Goossens, L. (2006). Parenting and adolescent problem behavior: an integrated model with adolescent selfdisclosure and perceived parental knowledge as intervening variables. Developmental Psychology, 42(2), 305–318. Stattin, H., & Kerr, M. (2000). Parental monitoring: a reinterpretation. Child Development, 71, 1072–1085. Wang, M.-T., Dishion, T. J., Stormshak, E. A., & Willett, J. B. (2011). Trajectories of family management practices and early adolescent behavioral outcomes. Developmental Psychology, 47(5), 1324–1341. Wang, G. T., Qiao, H., Hong, S., & Zhang, J. (2002). Adolescent social bond, self-control and deviant behavior in China. International Journal of Contemporary Sociology, 39(1), 52–68. Xinhua. (2009). Survey: Chinese high school students study more [Cited 24 Mar 2009]. Available from URL http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-03/24/ content_7610273.htm.
