Adolescent autonomy and conformity as mediators between parenting behaviors and academic achievement orientation in Beijing adolescents (China)

The relationship between parental behaviors and academic achievement orientation in Chinese adolescents was explored using structural equation modeling and survey data from 497 Beijing high school students. It was hypothesized that parental behaviors and academic orientation would be mediated by both adolescent conformity and autonomy. Because the survey instrument had been used exclusively with American students, an exploratory factor analysis was used on the Chinese data to insure the instrument did indeed measure the purported constructs. An unexpected finding of this study was the partitioning of autonomy into two subtypes (daily self-governance and goal autonomy) and conformity into two subtypes (harmonious conformity and planning conformity). Daily self-governance and harmonious conformity were then used as mediators. Contrary to Western conceptions of the importance of conformity over autonomy in Chinese societies, both daily self-governance and harmonious conformity were important for school achievement. Also, different parenting behaviors predicted behavioral autonomy or harmonious conformity. Support predicted both daily self-governance and harmonious conformity, punitiveness negatively predicted self-governance, and monitoring predicted harmonious conformity only.