Parental Involvement in Schooling as a Predictor of Academic Self-Efficacy among Senior Secondary School Students in Rivers State

Abstract

This study investigated parental involvement in schooling as predictors of academic self efficacy among public senior secondary schools in Rivers State. The correlational research design was adopted for the study. The population of this study consisted of 66,164 students which is the total population of senior secondary school students in Rivers State. The Tsaro Yamen formular was used to draw a sample size of 399 respondents, while the multi-stage sampling technique was adopted in selecting the sample for the study. Instruments used for data collection were self-structured questionnaires: the "Parental Involvement and Interest in Schooling Questionnaire (PIISQ)" and the "Academic Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (ASEQ)."To ensure the reliability and validity of these instruments, experts in Guidance and Counselling and Educational Measurement and Evaluation assessed their content and face validity. Internal consistency was confirmed using Cronbach’s alpha method, with reliability coefficients of 0.88 and 0.85 for the PIISQ and ASEQ, respectively. Research assistants facilitated the direct delivery of the questionnaires. Simple regression analysis was used to answer all the research questions, while t-test associated with the regression analysis was used to test the significance of the corresponding hypotheses at 0.05 alpha level. Result of the study revealed that provision of textual materials, career counselling, availability of home teaching are significant predictors of academic self-efficacy of senior secondary school students in Rivers State. It was, therefore recommended among others that parental involvement in school activities should be encouraged and the government should consider developing and implementing policies that will support it.