Development and Validation of Perceived Parental Involvement Questionnaire

Parental involvement has a positive influence on Adolescents' life, behaviour and achievements. Early adolescents often undergo various changes in the areas of social context, family bonding, friendships, ideologies and developmental processes. This phase of life is crucial and the adolescents are in indispensable need of parental support and guidance. Researchers have proved positive effects of parent involvement on children (Eccles & Harold, 1993). According to Henderson and Berla (1994), the most accurate predictor of a student's achievement in school is not income or social status but the extent to which that student's family is able to create a home environment that encourages learning, express high expectations for their children's achievement and future career and become involved in their children's education at school and in the community. Further, Epstein (1987) has developed a framework for defining six different types of parental involvement such as parenting, communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decision-making and collaborating with the community. Contrary to this in the modern family set up there is a lack of interaction between parents and children. In most families both the parents are engaged in earning their livelihood. They focus on satisfying the material needs of their children and mostly involve in their children's academic areas but the other aspects are neglected leading to various emotional crises during adolescence. Therefore, the researchers identified the need to assess perceived parental involvement among adolescent students. After a thorough review of the literature, no appropriate and relevant tool was found to assess the perceived parental involvement of Indian adolescents that take into account the cultural constraints and disparity. Hence, the investigators aimed at developing a tool to assess the perceived parental involvement of adolescents. The present study made an attempt to develop and validate an inventory to assess the perceived parental involvement of adolescents. Initial items were generated using the existing tool, reviews, interviews and focus group discussions. 55 items were initially generated which was given to experts in the field of psychology and education. By incorporating the suggestions given by the experts, content validity was established. Test-retest reliability, split half reliability, and inter-item reliability were established. Through factor analysis, Perceived Parental Involvement Inventory emerged as a uni-dimensional scale which establishes construct validity of the tool. Finally, the tool was administered along with Perceived Parental Expectations Inventory for establishing convergent validity which also confirmed the validity of the tool. After the modification, the self-report inventory finally consisting of 30 items which are rated using five-point scale is ready to administer.