| The purpose of this study was to understand students' experiences with parental involvement during the college experience. Since the beginning of the new millennium college administrators have noted an increase in the level of involvement that parents demonstrate on college campuses (Armour, 2007; Lum 2006; Shellenbarger, 2006). This study sought to understand how college students made sense of their parents' involvement and how students felt about their own ability to make decisions in the college environment. This study employed the theory of Emerging Adulthood developed by Jeffrey Arnett's (1999, 2000) to understand how young people who are 18-25 years of age experience the transitional time in their lives as they leave adolescence and become young adults. This study contains a review of the existing literature related to this study from the fields of psychology (Palladino Schulthesis & Blustein, 1994; Whitbourne, Sneed & Sayer, 2009), college student development (Fischer & Noble, 1960, Sanford 1966, Chickering & Reiser, 1993), and research on emerging adulthood (Arnett, 2008; Nelson, 2009). This study added to the body of literature on emerging adulthood by looking at how emerging adults in college feel about their relationship with their parents as they become adults. This study is a mixed methods study. In the first phase of this study, students at a nationally ranked College of Business were surveyed about how they viewed that time in their lives and their preferences for parental involvement during college. Then in the qualitative phase of the study 14 students from the same institution participated in one 60-minute interview. During these interviews students were asked about their college experience and the role their parents played in their college experience. The data in this study was coded and thematically analyzed. The study found that students generally sought their parents assistance with financial matters related to their college experience. When other non-finance related problems arose students tried to solve problems without the intervention of their parents only turning to them when they felt that college administrators were unwilling to listen to their concerns. |
