Parental Warmth and Parent Involvement: Their Relationships to Academic Achievement and Behavior Problems in School and Related Gender Effects

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

Dear authors,

I am glad to read your work, however, I have a major concern with this article, as the sample is so small, could it be consider and reconstructed as a case study?

Best regards,

Reviewer.

Author Response

Thank you for your helpful comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

This is a very thorough piece of work that meets the criteria for this special issue of Societies. 

On reading the introduction, I had many questions which in due course were answered. Therefore I suggest that the authors should include an introduction which outlines the following:

* the need for the current study, within a more broad context of the existing research on the topic

*what the article aims to achieve and how it will contribute to the ongoing discussion

*the context of the piece and why the study is located in India 

*a brief explanation of the key terms - parental involvement/warmth/behaviour/achievement

* an explanation of the significance of gender to this piece (and gender should also be in the title as this is an important variable in the results)

What is provided in the Introduction here is quite an abrupt opening to the piece which hits the ground running with data before really explaining what the study is about. I suggest this material would be more suitable as a sub-section - with the title (for example) Existing research and placed later in the article. This section is also quite difficult to read and requires some re-writing for greater clarity. 

Additionally please note the following:

Around line 127, it would be helpful to cite specific researchers in relation to the issue of parental involvement. 

Line 186 - please explain SES.

Around line 289 - please re-write for greater clarity. 

Ethics - well explained; however what are the potential issues with the subjects being known to yourself? What is your relationship with the setting? What are the problems with this? Also it might be worth suggesting that further research including students and teachers from other settings (in contrasting locations/demographics) would enhance the reliability of the data. 

Finally, as the data was collected in 2010, I am wondering how relevant it is to the current educational situation? Is this a typing error? If not, there should be some explanation of why data of more than ten years old is included here and again the limitations of this for generalising and making conclusions/recommendations. 

Author Response

Thank you for your helpful comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

Thank you for the opportunity to engage with this interesting paper.

This paper is well-written. The background, methods, findings and discussion are presented clearly. Arguments are well-structured and supported by the findings.

I have only a minor suggestion:

1) Can you please define 'parental involvement' and 'parental warmth' in the Introduction section, so that the reader is informed from the start what you mean by the use of these terms?

This is important as these two terms are the core of your paper. This will be very helpful as you then proceeded to explore these two terms in your Background section, which you did very convincingly.

All the best in the remaining review process.

Author Response

Thank you for your helpful comments

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

dear authors, 

First of all, I would like to congratulate you for the revision work you have carried out, some of my concerns have been solved. However, there are still some factors that make me recommend a second revision, I list each of them below: 

- It would be necessary to revise the bibliographic references and give them a unified format. 

- The reference : Skinner, A. T., Gurdal, S., Chang, L., Oburu, P., & Tapanya, S. (2022). Dyadic coping, parental warmth, and adolescent externalizing behavior in four countries. 

externalizing behavior in four countries. Journal of Family Issues, 43, 237-258. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X21993851. 

Appears in appendix, on line 840, appears to be a formatting error. 

- The annexes should be revised and should have a unified appearance.

- In line 469 there is a type "was10tatistically", in addition it would be necessary to carry out a proofreading to the whole article.

- They explain that:

"Data was collected in 2010 over the course of two months. This data is still relevant despite being collected in 2010 because the variables it explores (parental involvement, parental warmth, academic achievement, behavior problems) do not change in definition or measure over time."

While the indicator has not changed, has society changed? It would be interesting to explore this aspect in greater depth, both in limitations and in this section. 

Therefore, my recommendation is for major modifications. 

Best wishes, 

Reviewer. 

Author Response

Thank you for your helpful suggestions.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

I feel that my concerns have been meet, and the article is suitable for publication.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript deals with an important topic regarding the link between parenting dimensions and youth outcomes. However, the manuscript has several shortcomings.

Most importantly, it is not stated why the control dimension was not measured and analysed. This is crucial, as the reason why one dimension was significantly associated, and the other not, with the outcome variable might be due to omitted control dimension. While not using the control dimension is mentioned among the study limitations, merely mentioning a limitation and not explaining the reasoning behind the omission of the control dimension is not enough for a publication in a top journal.

The second main issue is the sampling, which is not described enough in detail. Also, I think it is not sufficiently structured (either quota or representative etc.).

Third, the measures used for problematic behaviour are not necessarily valid nor reliable. These were not tested nor presented to the reader in the manuscript.

Fourth, the conclusions the authors present do not follow their results. For example, one dimension not being linked to outcome variable among girls is not evidence of “Gender differences in the importance of parent involvement to educational success may stem from the son preference found in Indian culture”. While this may be true in India, insignificant results among girls might be due to several factors, including them scoring higher on both parenting dimensions (which is mentioned in passing in the paper itself) and higher academic achievement and thus having lower variability on these scores.

In addition, despite being stated by the authors, it is not true that parental warmth and parental involvement have not been examined and compared previously. While the reviewer has published one such study (not in English), at least two studies in English have been published on the link between parenting styles (which include the warmth dimension) and academic achievement:

Steinberg, Laurence, Susie D. Lamborn, Sanford M. Dornbusch, and Nancy Darling. 1992. “Impact of Parenting Practices on Adolescent Achievement: Authoritative Parenting, School Involvement, and Encouragement to Succeed.” Child Development 63 (5): 1266–81.

Pinquart, Martin. 2016. “Associations of Parenting Styles and Dimensions with Academic Achievement in Children and Adolescents: A Meta-Analysis.” Educational Psychological Review 28 (3): 475–93.

It might seem to a knowledgeable reader that the authors may not have a good grasp of the literature on parenting and youth outcomes.

Finally, the empirical design is not complex enough for it to be a convincing test of hypotheses (for example, no interaction effect was examined with regard to gender).

Author Response

Thank you for your helpful comments.  I have revised according to your suggestions and provided a response for each comment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Based on a sample of 216 schoolchildren and 8 teachers this paper examines parent involvement and parent-child relationship 12 as predictors of academic achievement and behavior problems.

 ---Specific comments--- 

1.     Abstract seems very static and not very fluid, the sentences are not connected to each other. As same the manuscript, the abstract should also go from the global to the specific within the topic. For example, starting with the fact that parent involvement and warmth has been extensively studied in the worldwide literature, but it is sparse in India. I encourage authors to review the entire abstract.

2.     The study variables should appear clearly in the entire manuscript. Moreover, please define the keywords correctly. I recommend that authors decide which words to use in the entire manuscript because parent-child relationship/parent warmth are not synonymous words. After reading the manuscript I recommend the authors to use parent warmth instead of parent-child relationship because it is the variable that is actually measured in the study (see method section). Parent-child relationship is a term that includes much more than just warmth (involvement, autonomy support, availability...) so it does not seem to me the most appropriate word to use in the manuscript. When the authors refer to both variables (involvement and warmth in relationships with their parents) is an appropriate term.

3.     Overalll, the Introduction section is quite underdeveloped. I suggest that the authors review this section in two aspects. Fistly, a part of the literature review is missing regarding the variable parent warmth where, as they have done with involvement, authors define the variable and state its association with academic achievement and behavior problems. Secondly, because gender differences are analyzed in the manuscript they should also appear in the literature review carried out, so please, make sure that it include in this section too.

4.     The study aim should appear in a different section called Present study and not in the Introduction section. Please include this section after Introduction section, remove the aim from page 1 and add it in this new section. This section should be start around line 166 as a different section as I said. Make sure all objectives and hypotheses are stated in this section and explain the expected results.

5.     Create a table would be useful in order to describe the sociodemographic characteristics of the sample.

6.     For the measures that were used, please, indicate if they are ad hoc questionnaires or belong to a questionnaire already created indicating its name, authors, total items, subscales.... Besides, please indicate whether response scores were summed or averaged to create their composite scores for data analysis. Moreover, please include Cronbach’s alphas for all measures used. In general, it doesn't seem like enough information about them in the present form.

7.     Results section is correct but I recommend including an autoregressive model to add more entity to the results. Perhaps adding this interesting result will allow obtaining more consistent and quality results for publication.

8.     Please title and number the table “Simple Correlations between Variables for Boys and Girls”, I believe that it would be Table 1.

9.     In general, it would be important for the authors to work on connecting the information on the Discussion with the Introduction, integrating the interpretation of the findings. Referencing should be improved in this section, supporting the results in base on my recommendations for Introduction section. So, please, revise and modify the Discussion section accordingly.

10.  Please, revise the limitations of the study. The sample of the study is quite small (216 schoolchildren and 8 teachers). Thus, this aspect should be a limitation of the study in order to avoid to generalize the results no only Western culture but also Indian population.

11.  Please, revise according to 7th Edition APA style all manuscript. Sometimes authors miss doi number or cited in the wrong way. For instance:

 Sumanjeet, S. (2017). The state of gender inequality in India. Gender Studies, 15, 139-157. doi: 10.1515/genst-2017-009

 McKay, M.M., Atkins, Hawkins, M. S. Brown, C. & Lynn, C. J. (2003). Inner-City African American parental involvement in children's schooling: Racial socialization and social support from the parent community. American Journal of Community Psychology, 32(1/2), 107-114.

Author Response

Thank you for your helpful comments.  I have revised according to your suggestions and provided a letter explaining all revisions by comment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

After reading the paper I would like to suggest authors to consider all the following points:

Abstract:
I would suggest focusing on what did you learn (that is not already known in the literature)?

Introduction:

Identifying a research gap is not enough; key is showing its significance to the field. The added value of your work is not clear (for readers of Societies) in the context of proper and current research (up to 2022). Instead of only point the need to cover a gap on research I suggest focussing on the significance of the current paper in the academic achievement and behavioural problems field. At this point the introduction is insufficient because is too focused on parental involvement and authors have paid less attention to academic achievement and behavioural problems. For example, definitions followed in the study to measure these two constructs should be included. What type of behaviours are included in behavioural problems? How academic achievement is understood and how it will be measure? Only by grades?

Moreover, what theory guided the study? What theory guided the theorized relationships between the variables selected. Currently, the introduction does not include a discussion of how the variables could be related. As I said before, I recommend that the authors reconsider framing their study in terms of theory to agglutinate the variables selected.

Even when a study is exploratory, the introduction should end with clearly articulated expectations (hypotheses) that advance current knowledge and that drive the data analysis. Hypothesis should also be framed in theoretical and empirical background. Authors should explain in what information is based each hypothesis.

Method:

Another problem is description of the sample. Author/s should include a discussion of the desired sample based on a power analysis, then the procedure used (i.e., who was contacted about participation), and finally the number of participants who were involved in the study.

Given the sensitivity of the questions how was anonymity and confidentiality conveyed and ensured? How much time did participants employ filling the form? How long did the data collection process take? Was any missing data and how was it handled? What year was administered the survey?

In the measure description, please included the name of each variable instead the initials.

CFA results in the current sample should be included for each variable. There is not reliability data of each measure in the current sample. It is not clear if instruments have adequate psychometric properties in the current sample. Authors of the measure are not cited.

A data analysis subsection to understand how authors proceeded is missing.

Measures of academic achievement and behavioural problems could be biased because is only based on teachers’ perceptions and information in what teacher should based their answers is also unclear. Both measures could be biased. This is a serious flaw in the study.

Tables should be included to better visualize the results.

Confidence intervals are missing in the regression model results.

Discussion:

How general are your results? These have to be of interest to the whole community. Relate these with your limitations.

Conclusions:

The authors should make explicit suggestions about how their study affects the design of prevention and intervention programs. The comments about practical implication in the current form are too general. Is there something new about a particular theory, or is there evidence of theory advancement?

Author Response

Thank you for your helpful comments.  I have revised according to your suggestions and provided a letter explaining all revisions by comment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Theoretically too underdeveloped.  For example, "Epstein’s Theory of School, Family, and Community Partnerships"... "“partnership” recognizes that  81 parents, teachers, and community members all work together to provide learning expe- 82 riences for students. " In the Discussion section, the authors state: "These results support  516 Epstein et al. (2019)’s [13] theory of school, family, and community partnerships because  517 they showed how parents could collaborate with their children’s schools to produce pos- 518 itive  outcomes of student achievement for  their  children. "

Such an explanation of a theory (that people work in partnership) is just too vague. The same goes for the second theory.

Also, some variables not being examined so far in a given country are not reason enough for it to be tested within that country. It can be, but the addition to the literature is just too small. Otherwise, 180+ new studies (in so many countries) would constitute novel scholarship.

Author Response

Thank you for your helpful comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors were very responsive with regard all my observations but I still have a few comments that I think add value to the manuscript.

1. Regarding Introduction section I consider that authors have divided this section into too many parts that do not help a flow reading of the manuscript. Maybe based on the suggest of another reviewer. I recommend join several parts into one. I don't believe it makes sense that a section (e.g., Definition of Parent Involvement or Parent Involvement and Academic Achievement…) to be composed of only one paragraph. So, I recommend to join Epstein’s Theory of School, Family, and Community Partnerships and Parental Acceptance-Rejection Theory under a tittle “background” or something similar. I recommend too to join the sections Definition of Parent Involvement, Parent Involvement and Academic Achievement, Parent Involvement and Behavior Problems in a same section without title under The emportantce of Parent Involvement section. And to do the same with parental involvement variable. Moreover, there are some section that I would reorganizing in the Introduction, concretely, Parent Involvement in India, Parent Involvement in Middle and High School. First, I believe that it makes more sense to move the literature review about parental involvement in India in Characteristics of Indian Parenting section, besides, authors should include a literature review of parental warmth in this setting too. Finaly, after a review focused on the main variables (involvement and warmth) in middle and high school and parenting in the Indian context I believe that Parent Involvement in Middle and High School section is repetitive and does not add content to the introduction, so I suggest eliminating it or integrating the most important parts in the rest of the sections.

2. Regarding the Current Study section I believe that in the present way is not completely described. I encourage to authors to make an effort to explain in more detail this important part of the manuscript. For example, a list of hypotheses is presented but they are not supported by a comprehensible and clear rationale. It is not clear to me… what are the results expected? ¿What have been found on others studies? ¿and, how these studies might connect with the one presented by authors?

Author Response

Thank you for your helpful comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

I appreciate authors efforts for improve their manuscript. However, I still think that the results of the present study could be biased for the measures used. I do not understand why authors have not used previously validate measures in India or why they haven't not conducted an EFA to test psychometric propierties of the measures used. This is a serious flaw and I cannot endorse publication.

Author Response

Thank you for your helpful comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx