ROLE OF PARENTING STYLES IN ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF COLLEGE STUDENTS

The current study was designed to identify parenting styles based on parents’ perception and to examine the relationship of parenting styles with students’ academic performance. Baumrind’s (1971) theoretical model of parenting styles was used. It is comprised of authoritative, authoritarian and permissive parenting styles. The Parental Authority Questionnaire (Buri, 1991) was used and modified in order to assess the three parenting styles based on parents’ perception. After consultation with experts, Researcher developed the Academic Performance Questionnaire, which was used to assess the students’ performance with regard to their educational motivation, communication skills, learning skills, creativity, positive attitude and study skills in this correlational study. Both instruments were developed on five point Likert scale. The target population of the study comprised of students of higher secondary level along with their parents studying at 17 Islamabad Model Colleges of both boys and girls. The sample was drawn from 10 Islamabad Model Colleges. The total number of respondents comprising the sample was 350 students 17-20 years old. Stratified random sampling was used to represent both genders equally. The correlation between parenting styles and academic performance was computed through Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r). The results of study showed that authoritative parenting style of mother and father had a positive relationship with academic performance. While the authoritarian and permissive parenting style of mother and father were negatively correlated with academic performance. Overall, the authoritative style of parenting proved to be appositive style and authoritarian and permissive styles proved to be negative styles of parenting in the cultural context of Islamabad.