The Reciprocal Longitudinal Relationship Between the Parent-Adolescent Relationship and Academic Stress in Korea

We explored the direction of causation and the longitudinal significance of the relationship between the parent-adolescent relationship and adolescent academic stress. We analyzed responses from the Korean Youth Panel Survey (KYPS), a longitudinal survey that has taken place over 5 years. Just over 2,400 valid responses were analyzed using autoregressive cross-lagged modeling. The results revealed that the parent-adolescent relationship and academic stress experienced by students during 1 year were significant predictors of the levels of stress felt in subsequent years. The central finding in this study was that the closer the parent-adolescent relationship, the greater was the intensity of the adolescents' academic stress. We posited possible explanations for these findings in the context of Korean culture.