Academic Success of Early Adolescents: The Role of Perfectionism, Adaptation and Parental Academic Involvement

Abstract

Given the major emphasis on the importance of high academic achievement in our society, it is necessary to examine how children perceive parental expectations related to academic success and how that reflects on their academic achievement. More precisely, the aim of this study was to examine unique contributions of sociodemographic characteristics (gender, age and parent's education), personal characteristics (adaptive and non-adaptive perfectionism), psychological adaptation (test anxiety and somatization), and certain aspects of parental academic involvement (monitoring, helping with homework, parent-child communication, and academic expectations) in explaining academic success of younger adolescents. To examine the perception of the aspects of parental academic involvement, this study contains validation of Perceived Parental Academic Involvement Questionnaire (Carranza, You, Chhuoni, & Hudley, 2009). The sample consisted of 273 young adolescents from the fifth to the eighth grade of an elementary school in Split. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed original four-factor structure of Perceived Parental Academic Involvement Questionnaire. The results obtained a positive relationship between parental academic involvement and academic achievement of adolescents. More precisely, adolescents who perceive higher academic expectations of their parents have higher levels of academic success. By using hierarchical regression analysis, the results obtained a significant contribution of gender, nonadaptive perfectionism and parental academic expectations in explaining the academic success of adolescents. In addition, the most significant predictor of adolescent's academic success was parental academic expectations.