Perspectives from parent-adolescent dyads on parental engagement in their adolescents' out-of-school programs

The current study examines how parent-adolescent dyads perceive parental involvement in adolescents' out-of-school programs. As part of a larger study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 36 adolescents in youth programs and their parents separately. Youth were 13-18 years old (M = 15.9, SD = 1.2). Also, youth were a diverse sample of 14 Latino/a (38.9%), 9 African American or Black (25.0%), and 13 European American (36.1%) and included 23 female participants (63.9%) and 13 male participants (36.1%). Qualitative methods and approaches, such as open coding, consensus, and the inductive approach were utilized to provide an understanding of how parent-adolescent dyads perceive parental involvement. Two constructs and 7 overarching categories were identified. The first construct is type of parental involvement, which includes three overarching categories: direct parental involvement, indirect parental involvement, and lack of parental involvement. The second construct is level of parental involvement, which includes four overarching categories: good amount of parental involvement, more parental involvement, less parental involvement, and reasons for lack of parental involvement. This study suggests that parent-adolescent dyads perceive parental involvement differently and that there is variation between how parents and youth perceive parental involvement by ethnic group