A Cross-Cultural Perspective of Parental Influence on Female Adolescents' Achievement Beliefs and Behaviors in Sport and School Domains

Abstract

Little is known about parental socialization processes for youth participants from different cultural backgrounds. The purpose of this study was to examine parental influence on self-perceptions, task values, and achievement behaviors among female adolescents from two cultures using Eccles' expectancy-value theory (Eccles et al., 1983) . Twelve Anglo Canadian and nine East Indian female adolescents were interviewed about perceptions of parental influence on expectancy-value constructs for sport and academic domains. Inductive and deductive content analyses were performed to identify lower and higher order themes from interview responses. Similarities and differences in perceived parental influence emerged for girls of both cultural groups and in both domains. Our findings support links among expectancy-value constructs and highlight cultural variations in parental socialization of achievement cognitions and behaviors in multiple domains.

Key words:

• Female athletes
• Qualitative methods
• Social influence
• Youth development

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jennifer A. Bhalla

This study was partially funded by a grant from the Association for Applied Sport Psychology. We thank Amanda Stanec for her assistance in the coding process. Please address correspondence concerning this article to Jennifer Bhalla, School of Kinesiology, University of Minnesota, 1900 University Ave. SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455