First-Year Female College Students’ Academic Motivation as a Function of Perceived Parenting Styles: A Contextual Perspective

The connections between three parenting styles (authoritarian, permissive, and authoritative) and three motivational constructs (extrinsic/intrinsic and amotivation for learning) of 202 Palestinian-Arab young females were tested. This study used structural equation modeling statistical method and smallest space analysis (SSA, a variant of multidimensional scaling MDS) to compute the complex relationships indicated in previous research between the examined variables. Results showed that the participants perceived their parents as more authoritative than authoritarian or permissive. According to the path analysis results, the authoritative parenting style was negatively connected to amotivation, the authoritarian was positively related to extrinsic motivation, and a positive relation was found between permissiveness and amotivation for learning. Only the SSA has confirmed the postulated connection between the authoritative parenting style and intrinsic motivation variables. Implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.