Measurement of Perceived Parenting Style Influence on Academic Achievement among Saudi College Students

The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between academic achievement and parenting styles among Saudi college students. The participants in this study consisted of 349 male and 219 female college students, whose age ranged from 18-25 years. The instruments for the current study were: (a) an Arabic translation of the Revised Parental Authority Questionnaire (Shilkret, Vecchiotti, & Edwards, 2003), (b) an Arabic translation of the PAQ (Burl, 1991; Dwairy et al., 2006), (c) a self-report of grades, and (d) a demographic questionnaire. All instruments were group administered. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted by the use of structural equation modeling to determine whether the theory driven concepts would support the structural validity of the tests. The findings showed that the confirmatory factor analysis suggested that the researcher's data for the PAQ-A and RPAQ-A had an acceptable fit to the specified scale in the PAQ and RPAQ; so the PAQ-A and RPAQ-A seemed to have internal construct validity for these Saudi college students. The internal consistency reliability, Cronbach's alpha for PAQ-A and RPAQ-A, was acceptable. Therefore, the researcher found that the measurement of parenting styles by the PAQ-A and RPAQ-A Scales had excellent evidence of reliability and structural validity. There was a significant correlation between the corresponding scales of the PAQA and RPAQ-A. Therefore, in terms of external validity methods, the concurrent validity of the PAQ-A was highly correlated with the RPAQ-A scale. There was a significant correlation between the self-reported (i.e., GPA from a student) and the teacher reported grades (i.e., GPA from a teacher record). There was a moderate significant positive correlation between gender and GPA. In regard to the variables in the model, gender was the largest predictor that had an impact on academic achievement, so the females' GPA were higher than males' GPA among these Saudi college students. However, in terms of regression, there was no interaction term between the correlations of parenting style and academic achievement in regard to (a) the function of parental education level, (b) the function of family size, and (c) the function of birth order. In brief, Saudi parenting styles did not predict academic achievement among these Saudi college students. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]