By LEANDRA ROLLE
Tribune Staff Reporter
A RECENT Bahamian study has examined the link between parenting styles and student academic performance, finding little evidence of a strong connection between the authoritative, authoritarian and permissive parenting styles and students’ academic performance.
The study by Nicora Stubbs-Young, which aims at expanding Caribbean research on parenting’s impact on student outcomes, involved data from 582 randomly selected parents and 582 public students.
The research utilised a demographic questionnaire and the Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (PSDQ) to classify parents’ self-reported parenting styles.
The study noted that the nuclear family was the predominant structure among participants, followed by extended families, single-parent homes, common-law families, and blended families. Of the parenting styles reported, the authoritative style was most commonly practiced.
Student GPAs from the Christmas term were used as indicators of academic performance, with data available for 466 students.
According to the findings, 80 percent of these students achieved at least a 2.0 GPA, the passing grade for public schools, while 20 percent fell below this threshold.
Additionally, 45 percent of students earned GPAs above 3.0.
The study conducted a correlation to examine any relationships between each parenting style and academic performance. The results showed no statistically significant correlation between parenting styles and GPA.
However, a low positive relationship was observed between the authoritative style and academic performance.
Meanwhile, the study found a moderate positive relationship between the authoritarian parenting style and academic performance, while a moderate negative relationship was observed between the permissive parenting style and academic performance.
The study said that its findings did not align with previous international research and “puts into question the relevance and applicability of Baumrind’s Theory of Parenting Styles for the Caribbean and Bahamian context”.
It also acknowledged several limitations that may have influenced the results, including the use of unstandardised scores to measure academic performance, which limits the ability to make reliable comparisons between participating schools.
“Researchers must also be cognisant that the focus of this research is on the relationship between parenting styles and academic performance. This study, therefore, does not address other factors that may be related to the academic outcomes for students such as parental involvement.”
