A study of the relationship between parent involvement and student achievement
Abstract
The overall purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between parental involvement in the schooling process and children's achievement test scores. The importance of this research was three-fold: (a) to investigate the relationship between level of involvement, Less and More, and achievement test scores (Education Records Bureau); (b) to investigate the relationship between level of involvement in four categories--Child, Staff, Parent Association, and Fund Raising--and achievement scores; and (c) to investigate the relationship between level of involvement in six grades, three through eight, and achievement scores. The sample was randomly selected from 312 students at Ensworth School, Nashville, Tennessee. Analysis consisted of three multi-variate Analyses of Variance (ANOVAs) and two post hoc tests, Fisher's LSD Test and Newman-Keul's Range Test. A preliminary analysis of data was conducted to determine the suitability of the model by testing the impact of Grade, Sex, and Task on student achievement. Finding that none of the three variables tested had a significant effect on achievement scores, two primary and one supplementary analyses of data were conducted. Results indicated a significant relationship between overall level of parental involvement and student achievement scores, in a negative direction. This finding can be attributed to the overall high level of involvement in the target school and the possible effects of satiation. No significant relationship was found, however, between level of involvement in any of the four categories or six grades tested and achievement scores. These findings can be attributed to the use of surface categories of involvement and the lack of first and second grade students in the sample. It is recommended that further parental involvement studies be conducted that would include: (a) meaningful as well as surface categories of involvement; (b) significant differences between levels of involvement; and (c) first and second grade students and their parents in the sample population.
Subject Area
School administration|Curricula|Teaching|Educational sociology
Recommended Citation
Vincent Roger Huth,
"A study of the relationship between parent involvement and student achievement"
(1989).
ETD Collection for Tennessee State University.
Paper AAI9017232.
https://digitalscholarship.tnstate.edu/dissertations/AAI9017232