Relationships between parenting styles, parental involvement, and intellectual abilities among preschool children in Putrajaya, Malaysia

Development of intellectual ability is one of the critical aspects of development among preschool children. Children’s intellectual ability is among the most essential predictors for the rest of their academic life. Children with higher intellectual ability or intelligence quotient (IQ) are less likely to be held back a grade in their schooling years, and less likely to have very few friends or rejected by their peers. Furthermore, some of the important and possible factors that may likely to explain the children’s intellectual ability include of: social environment which reflect on how parents discipline children and participate in children’s learning (parenting styles and parental support), and inherent factors of the child’s sex. Parenting styles may also affect children’s outcomes. The main purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between parenting styles, parental involvement and preschool children’s intellectual ability. Besides, this study also assessed the moderating role of the child’s sex on the relationship between parenting styles and parental involvement among preschool children. A total of 234 preschool children aged 6 from 16 private preschools in Putrajaya Malaysia were selected by using cluster sampling technique. The selected preschool children’s intellectual ability were measured by using The Drawing-A-Person Intellectual Ability Test for Children, Adolescents, and Adults (DAP: IQ; Reynolds & Hickman, 2004). Higher scoring on the instrument signifies higher IQ level which represent higher intellectual ability. Besides, the selected mothers were required to complete a self-administered questionnaire at home. The selected preschool children’s mother’ parenting styles was measured by using Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (PSDQ) – short version by Robinson, Mandleco, Olsen, and Hart (2001). The PSDQ consists of 3 subscales which authoritarian, authoritative and permissive with internal consistency reliability of 0.82, 0.86 and 0.64. The PSDQ was filled up by the vement was measured using The Family Involvement Questionnaire (FIQ; Fantuzzo, Tighe, & Child, 2000). The questionnaire revealed 3 involvement constructs which includes of school-based involvement, home- school conferencing, and home-based involvement with the reliability indices of 0.85, 0.85 and 0.81. The data analysis conducted by using the Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS), version 20 utilized to address the objectives of the study. Apart from this, multiple regressions were used to determine the unique predictor of intellectual ability. The results of the study showed that parenting styles and parental involvement had no significant relationships with preschool children’s intellectual ability. However, there was a significant differences in intellectual ability between boys and girls where girls were found to have higher score than boys. Besides, regression analyses showed that the child’s sex appeared to be the unique predictor of intellectual ability in the study. The study concluded that parenting styles and parental involvement do not play a significant role in children’s intellectual ability in this study. The findings on sex differences in intellectual ability supported past findings. It is recommended for future studies to examine other factor such as parents’ IQ test to further explain preschool children’s intellectual ability.

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