Off-campus UNL users: To download campus access dissertations, please use the following link to log into our proxy server with your NU ID and password. When you are done browsing please remember to return to this page and log out.
Non-UNL users: Please talk to your librarian about requesting this dissertation through interlibrary loan.
A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF CHILD-REARING ATTITUDES OF FOUR SELECTED GROUPS OF PARENTS
Abstract
The study was motivated by the perceived role that parents play in the education of their children. Increasingly, classroom problems are being traced to social and family problems. A major area of the study's concern was using parent effectiveness training to facilitate the role of parents in coordinating the effects of the home with those of the school more effectively. The study problem was how to determine individual need for parental training by using measuring instruments administered to parents. The purpose of the study was to create an instrument in the form of a questionnaire which could be used to assess parental deficiencies in certain crucial areas of human relationships, education, and training. With this objective in mind, the researcher constructed a questionnaire consisting of eight sections: (1) demographic data and general information; (2) degrees of career involvement and home involvement; (3) attitudes in the area of interpersonal communication and awareness; (4) degree of social-economic strain; (5) parental attitudes toward educating children; (6) parental attitudes with respect to basic values and world views; (7) degree of marital satisfaction; and (8) degree of emotional maturity. Responses to statements in each section were provided for on a Likert-type scale ranging from 1 to 5. The questionnaire was field-tested as a provisional instrument. The results were evaluated by a panel of qualified judges. Their comments and suggestions were used as a basis for revising the instrument. Its finalized form was then administered to a sample of parents, to illustrate using the questionnaire in evaluating specific hypotheses related to parent effectiveness training. The study sample consisted of 22 parents who had never sent their children either to a preschool or to a daycare center (the no-preschool group); 30 parents who were military personnel (the military group); 32 parents who favored the Montessori approach to the education of young children (the Montessori group); and 16 parents of lower socioeconomic status (the low-SES group). The four groups were compared on the basis of their responses to all of the items in the eight sections of the questionnaire. The value of the questionnaire was illustrated by the kinds of conclusions which it could be used to reach, based on the questionnaire data obtained from the sample. For instance, the military group was identified as exhibiting a very conservative trend in politics, education, and general values. It was found that all four groups experienced very little marital satisfaction, but that they displayed a fairly high degree of emotional maturity. The Montessori group placed more faith in professional counseling and less in religion, reversing the tendency of the no-preschool group. All four groups were more or less free of social-economic strain. The no-preschool group was much more home-involved than career-involved, the opposite of the Montessori group. Marital satisfaction did not depend on degree of home involvement; career involvement did not result in less marital satisfaction, or home involvement in more marital satisfaction. Although 76 percent of the sample members were female, they were not female chauvinists. There were numerous differences between groups in their attitudes toward the education of children. The questionnaire was recommended as an instrument useful for evaluating the effects of parental effectiveness training through pre- and posttesting. It was recommended that, through multiple correlation and regression analysis, future research seek to identify certain syndromes such as conservatism, or item clusters, which might serve as predictors of variables such as marital satisfaction or attitudes toward the education of children.
Subject Area
School administration
Recommended Citation
PLAMBECK, LAVONNE K, "A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF CHILD-REARING ATTITUDES OF FOUR SELECTED GROUPS OF PARENTS" (1980). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI8018665.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI8018665