Parental Involvement, Academic Self-Efficacy, and Depression on Academic Performance Among Chinese Students During COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Objective

This study was conducted to identify the factors (especially parental involvement, academic self-efficacy, and depression) associated with academic performance among Chinese K-12 students during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods

This cross-sectional study used data from the 2020 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS). The CFPS was conducted from July to December 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. A multistage probability sample proportional to size was used for the survey. The final sample consisted of 1747 K-12 students. This study used the 14-item Chinese Parental Involvement and Support Scale, the Responsibility Scale, and the 8-item Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale to measure parental involvement, academic self-efficacy, and depression, respectively. An ordered probit regression and structural equation models were employed to analyze the factors associated with academic performance. A multiple imputation technique was applied to compute missing values in selected variables.

Results

We found that parental involvement and academic self-efficacy were positively associated with good academic performance. In contrast, depression was negatively associated with good academic performance. Moreover, academic stress, male, rural residency, middle school, family size, high income, online gaming daily, reading, and intelligence quotient were statistically significant predictors on academic performance.

Conclusion

The empirical findings suggested that parental involvement and academic self-efficacy were positively and significantly associated with good academic performance. However, depression was negatively and significantly associated with good academic performance. These results showed that policymakers and practitioners can help improve academic success and address educational inequalities among K-12 students by implementing a series of reforms.

Keywords:

• parental involvement
• academic self-efficacy
• depression
• academic performance
• K-12
• COVID-19 pandemic
• China

Ethics Approval

This research has used a publicly available secondary dataset. The dataset does not contain any individual identifiers. No ethical approval was required due to the type and nature of the data used.

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Scientific Research Foundation for Doctoral Scholars in Inner Mongolia Medical University (YKD2020BSJJ018), the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Natural Science Fund (2021BS07003) and the Scientific Research Foundation for Young Scholars in Inner Mongolia Medical University (YKD2018QNCX017). The funding bodies played no role in the design of the study and collection, analysis, and interpretation of data and in writing the manuscript.