The investigation of relationship between high school students' perceived parental acceptance – rejection and academic achievement

This research has been grounded on Parental Acceptance-Rejection Theory (PART). The main aim of this research is to demonstrate the predictive strength of the psychological adjustment and self-esteem levels on academic success when perceived parental acceptance-rejection is controlled. Sample of the study consisted of 737 (60% female, 39.9% male) 9th, 10th and 11th grade high school students studied between 2013-2014 term year in six different high schools from three different regions (Bornova, Buca, Karsiyaka) of Izmir. Instruments employed in this study were, Personal Information Form designed to record the students'demographical information, Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire to evaluate how participants perceive acceptance and rejection from their mothers and fathers, Personality Assessment Questionnaire to determine their psychological adjustment, Coopersmith Self-Esteem Questionnaire to determine their self-esteem levels and finally, official documents acquired from schools' administration office showing levels of academic success of students' to determine their academic success levels. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed that psychological adaptation and self-esteem levels predicted the academic success of high school students when their parental acceptance-rejection scores were controlled. Furthermore, it is found that if participants perceived their mothers hostility/aggression and their father hostility and neglect (in rejected polar of warmth) their academic success levels decreased. Perceived acceptance-rejection scores of their parents found to be related to their psychological adjustment and self-esteem levels. Increased hostility/aggression attitudes and negative self-evaluations and dependency levels decreased the academic success. In contrast, increased in overall, home-family, school-academic self-esteem subscale scores resulted in increase of the students' academic success. Also, emotional unresponsiveness, emotional instability, world views and social self-esteem were related to academic success of the high school students in this study. The results of this research have been discussed in the scope of the current literature and few suggestions have been made for future research.