Relationships between adolescent and parental characteristics and adolescents' attitudes to school and self-rated academic performance

The main aim of the present study was to examine the ability of self-reported adolescent and parental characteristics to predict adolescents' school attitudes and their self-rated academic performance. Data were collected from 347 Australian high school students in Years 9 and 10 and 236 of their parents. Students' self-reports of their neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, (Eysenckian) psychoticism, and school attitudes were obtained. Parents were asked to report on their levels of conscientiousness, psychoticism and child-rearing practices. Favourable attitudes to school correlated .57 (p < .001) with self-rated academic performance. Results also showed that adolescent-reported personality traits (psychoticism and conscientiousness) as well as having a father employed at the professional/managerial level best predicted favourable attitudes to school. Parental conscientiousness and parenting styles were significant predictors of student-rated academic performance, both these factors interacting with the sex of the adolescent. The results are discussed in the context of previous research findings.