title: Parental styles, conscientiousness, and academic performance in high school: a three-wave longitudinal study.
abstract: This article assesses whether perceived parental style influenced the extent to which adolescents became increasingly conscientious and whether changes in conscientiousness influenced academic grades 1 year later. Parental styles, conscientiousness, verbal, and numerical ability at Time 1 were measured. One year later conscientiousness was again assessed, and 1 year after that end-of-year exam results were obtained. More than 784 students (mean age=12.3 years, SD=0.49) participated in the 1st year. The data of 563 students were matched across the 3 years. Conscientiousness tended to decrease from Time 1 to Time 2. Structural equation modeling showed that adolescents with more authoritative parents experienced less of a decrease in conscientiousness at Time 2 than did students with less authoritative parents and the same baseline level of conscientiousness at Time 1. Additionally, the decrease in conscientiousness at Time 2 predicted worse grades at Time 3, even after controlling for baseline levels of academic achievement.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia. pheaven@uow.edu.au
authors.forename: Patrick C L
authors.initials: PC
authors.lastname: Heaven
authors.forename: Joseph
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ciarrochi
mesh_terms: D000124:Achievement; D000293:Adolescent; D001318:Authoritarianism; D003242:Conscience; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D008433:Mathematics; D009517:New South Wales; D016487:Parenting; D010541:Permissiveness; D010553:Personality Development; D011932:Reading; D012941:Social Responsibility; D014956:Writing