Associating Student Self-Discipline and Parental Involvement in Students’ Academic Activities With Student Academic Performance

Abstract Academic performance of K-12 students in North America could be improved in that the majority of students produce undistinguished results in every international assessment of academic proficiency. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether student’s self-discipline and parental involvement in student’s academic activities have any impact on student’s Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) scores or on their GPA. A quantitative, cross-sectional method utilizing multiple regression was used to investigate the relationships among the variables. Due to challenges of collecting sufficient data, the study was conducted in two phases: a preliminary study involving 16 students in schools in the Texas Conference of Seventh day-Adventists and later a primary study that utilized archived data from 5,144 grades 6 and 7 students in Seventh-day Adventist schools in the North American Division (NAD). In the preliminary study, teachers responded to a questionnaire to rate their students’ level of self-discipline, while parents responded to a parent questionnaire designed to measure their parental involvement. Results indicated that student’s self-discipline and parental involvement are significantly correlated with student’s ITBS scores and GPA. Student diligence showed the highest positive correlation with academic performance.