Parental Behaviors as a Risk Factor Associated with Delinquency among High School Students

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify parent’s behavior and their influence on the tendency of students behaving delinquently. This research was conducted among 86 high school students in three public high schools in Gombak area, Selangor. Samples were chosen based on their records of disciplines and were high risk youths in their school because of behaviors problem. Three types of parent’s behavior, which are, verbal behaviors, physical behaviors and anti-social behaviors were assessed to determine their influences on the student’s delinquency such as violent behaviors, abused and general delinquency such as skipping school for no reason. The result showed that there was no significant association between parent’s behaviors with student’s delinquency. However, findings indicated that several items in parent’s physical behavior (e.g. father is a fierce man) and verbal behavior (e.g. parents always nags me about my behaviors) have moderate link and contribute to the delinquent outcomes of the students. This results demonstrated that several parenting behavior have negative impact on teenagers. Furthermore, anti-social behavior scored low in association with student’s delinquent behaviors. The findings revealed that parent’s behaviors are not the main risk factor that contributes to the student’s delinquent behaviors but other external factors such as friends, media and environment experiences might associated to student’s delinquent attitudes thus need more further research in this area.