Secondary students’ perspectives of parent involvement in school : measuring amount of involvement and level of satisfaction

• Main Author: Kavanagh, Paula Leeanne
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/17562

Few studies have examined how parents are involved in secondary students' education and no known research has looked at secondary students' perceptions of their parents' involvement in their education. In this study the amount of parent involvement and the related level of satisfaction associated to that involvement was investigated among 87 students in grades ten, 11, and 12 at three high schools in British Columbia. Participants were surveyed using a modified version of the Home, School, and Family Partnership (HSFP) survey for high school students (Epstein, Connors, & Salinas, 1993) and a survey of satisfaction that was developed specifically for use in this study. The results indicated that the HSFP-S was a reasonably valid and moderately reliable measure of parent involvement for the discrete types of parent involvement that it represented. The four factor identified were: Communication: Home-School, Communication: Parent-Child, Requests for Information and Support at School, and Requests for Information and Support at Home. Participants reported higher amounts of Communication: Home-School than any other type. There was a significant effect of family status and grade associated to amount of parent involvement for certain types of activities. Further, participants reported feeling satisfied with the current amounts for both communication type parent involvement factors but showed a general trend that as amount of involvement went up, level of satisfaction went down. There was no significant relation between level of satisfaction and the other types of parent involvement. Further research is needed to determine how present models of parent involvement apply to students at the secondary school level. === Education, Faculty of === Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of === Graduate