Parental Involvement and Students Academic Achievement

McBride, B. A., Dyer, W., Liu, Y., Brown, G. L., & Hong, S. (2009). The Differential Impact of Early Father and Mother Involvement on Later Student Achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 101(2), 498-508.
This was an exploratory study to examine the effects of parental involvement with a child at an early age and how this affected student achievement later on. The data collected was done by survey research in two waves. The first survey was administered during the spring/fall of 1997 and the second during fall 2002 and spring 2003. The sample of people used was 390 children ages 2-5. Time 1 assessed fathers and mothers participation of early parenting behaviors and parental school involvement and student achievement were assessed at time 2. There were several different measures used at time 1 which included; parent-child household centered activities (i.e. washing dishes and preparing food), parent-child centered activities (i.e. reading stories, playing games), parental limit setting, responsibility (who makes the child’s appointments, etc.) and affection (hugging and saying I love you). At time 2 there were only two measures, parental involvement and student achievement.
The results of the study proved that neither fathers’ nor mothers’ early parenting behaviors were found to be directly related to the academic achievement of students later on. But it does suggest that especially for fathers, those that were involved early on tend to continue to be involved with their child academically as they age. An assumption that I took from this study is that it is important to interact with your child early on in their lives and it is even more important to continue to be involved with their academics as they get older.