Parental involvement and student academic achievement: A cross-sectional study

Purpose - Parents’ involvement in children’s education and academic achievement is undeniable. Parental involvement does not have one universal definition and it is not only limited to activities conducted at home. It includes home-based activities, school-based activities as well as parents’ aspiration toward their children’s education.In China, research on parental involvement is still at its primary stages, especially in the rural areas where literature on parental involvement is sparse.Further studies are needed to determine the levels of parental involvement and its role in an ethnic minority school children’s achievement.Hence, this study aims to examine the role of parental involvement in children’s academic achievement at an ethnic minority rural area in China. More specifically, this study examines the levels of parental involvement in the aspect of parents’ educational aspiration, home-based and school-based involvements; examines the differences in the levels of parents’ involvement between low achieving students and high achieving students; and investigates the relationship between parental involvement and student academic achievement. Methodology - This quantitative research study utilized the cross-sectional survey design method. A 30-item self-constructed questionnaire on parental involvement was used to collect data from 280 parents of third and fourth grade students selected using the non-probability purposive sampling techniques.. Five experts from a faculty of education examined the content and face validity of the research instrument. The internal reliability analysis of the questionnaire yielded a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.94. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), version 23 was used to analyze the final collected data. Descriptive analysis, including the mean scores, frequencies and percentages, and standard deviations were used to analyze demographic data and parents’ responses to question number one (i.e. levels of parental involvement). Furthermore, inferential statistics were used to answer question number two to find the differences among the mean scores of parental involvement with students’ academic achievement (high achievement and low achievement).In this aspect, the independent sample t-test was used. Bivariate Pearson correlation was used to answer third question to find the relationships between parental involvement and student academic achievement. Findings - The findings of the study showed that parents of the 3rd and 4th grade students were involved in their children’s education.These parents had a high level of educational aspiration toward their children’s education; the parents were more involved in their children’s education at home than at school. The parents of high achieving students were more involved than those of low achieving students.There was also a statistically significant positive correlation between parental involvement and student academic achievement