Relationship between Aggression and Parenting Styles

Relationship between Aggression and Parenting Styles 5.1  Introduction This chapter includes the summary of the study, the conclusion derived from the study. The implication of the study and the limitations are also discussed in this chapter followed by the future research suggestions. 5.2  Summary The purpose of the study was to the level of aggression, between adolescents with different styles of perceived parenting style of their fathers. The sample included101 adolescent girls and boys, belonging to the age group of 14 to 16 years coming from various schools of Pune city. The sample included boys and girls from middle class population who were English speaking.The adolescents included in the sample had working fathers and homemaker mothers. The adolescents were categorized into three groups based on their perceived parenting styles of their father. The tools used in the study were Buss and Perry Aggression Questionnaire (Buss Perry, 1992) to measure Aggression among adolescents and the Parental Authority Questionnaire (Buri, 1991) was used to assess the perceived parenting style. The research design used was non-equivalent multi group post-test design. The sampling method used for this study was Random sampling. Permission was acquired from the various schools selected to participate in the study. After the permission was granted, the target sample (adolescent students) was requested to participate in the study. The questionnaires were handed over to the students and instructions were given. The independent variables parenting style had three levels namely Permissive, Authoritarian and Authoritative. These levels were made into three groups. The mean score on each group was calculated as well as the standard deviation. All candidates whose score lay above the â€Å"one standard deviation up† score were included in the group. Thus the three groups were formed. Since there were three levels of the independent variable giving three mean scores the statistical analysis used for the study was ANOVA. Based on literature review the following hypotheses were formulated. Aggression will be significantly higher among adolescents who have Authoritarian fathers than adolescents who have Authoritative fathers. Aggression will be significantly higher among adolescents who have Permissive fathers than authoritative fathers. Aggression will be significantly higher among adolescents who have Authoritarian fathers than Permissive fathers. Conclusion There was a significant difference in the aggression scores between adolescents who perceived their fathers to be Authoritarian and adolescents who perceived their father to be Authoritative. Thus concluding that, adolescents who perceive their father to be Authoritative are less Aggressive in comparison to adolescents who perceive their father to be Authoritarian. No significant difference was found between the aggression scores of adolescents who perceived their father to be Permissive and Authoritative. Similarly, no significant differences were found between adolescents who perceived their fathers to be Permissive and Authoritarian. 5.4  Implication It was concluded by the study that, adolescents who perceived their fathers to be Authoritarian were more aggressive in comparison to the other two groups. The findings can be used to Psycho – educate parents about the effect of Authoritarian parenting which may help preventing aggressive behaviours among adolescents. The same could be extended to a school setting too, where teachers are also made aware of the consequences of Authoritative interaction with their students. Also as the time spent by the adolescent with the father has been spoken about as a factor influencing aggression. These findings could be used to educate parents about the adequate amount of time that is required to be actively spent with their adolescent. This finding can also be used in future researches by comparing variables such as academic performance with perceived parenting styles. Further research could also include comparing mother’s parenting style and aggression. 5.5Limitation The sample did not include equal number of girls and boys which may have affected the results of the study. A common observation around the world is that males are more aggressive than females (Perry,Perry Weiss, 1989), as aggression is influenced by the male sex hormone testosterone (Dabbs, 1998). Therefore it could have been beneficial to include equal number of boys and girls to control gender differences. The sample included only middle class population. Not including the other social strata in the sample does not allow the sample to be a true representative of Pune city. Hence, the use of only Middle class sample would be counted as a limitation of this study. It was observed that a few responses of a few candidates were influenced by social desirability. This resulted in discarding of such response sheets thus affecting the sample size. The sample size was only 200 out of which only 101 could be included into the three groups made. This constitutes a very small percent of the total population of Pune city and hence the results cannot be generalized. Most of the literature review caters to the Western and European sample, whereas the sample included in this study belongs to the Indian population. In cultures such as African-American and Asian-American, adolescents tend to have less negative effects such as deviant aggressive behaviours as compared to other ethnic groups (Steinberg, 2001). Since there are culture differences found in aggression, culture may have played an essential role in influencing Aggression which may be counted as a limitation. 5.6  Suggestions The study had a number of drawbacksthat could be avoided in the future studies. To begin with, the limitations mentioned above could be looked into. Correcting the limitations of this study would represent the Population better and hence yield more apt results in turn. The most important suggestion would be to increase size of the sample. Since the present study consisted only of 101individuals, there is a possibility that the sample wasn’t represented best. With a larger sample the results may have been more accurate as the general population would be represented in a better manner. In future research it can be ensured that there is equal representation of each gender, as doing so would eliminate the effect of gender differences on the variable aggression. For future research it can be kept in mind that the sample may have equal number individuals from each socioeconomic class and not just middle class as done in this study. A sample that is inclusive of individuals from all classes would be a well represented sample and therefore the results may be generalized to the entire city being studied. Another suggestion for future studies done would be to add the variables that were not included in this study, such as number of hours the father spends with his adolescent. As it has been discussed earlier that number of hours the father spends with the adolescent is an important factor known to have an influence on the adolescent’s aggressive behaviours. Hence, controlling the number of hours the father spends with his adolescent could help avoid this factor to have an influence on the variable – aggression.