Parent and peer attachment and commitment to school - A correlational research involving high school Iranian students

Oct 15, 2026

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A correlational study examines how parent attachment and peer attachment relate to students’ commitment to school among 10th-grade learners in Bavi County, Khozestan Province. The sample includes 500 students (250 girls and 250 boys) selected via multistage random sampling. Parent and peer attachment inventories and a school commitment questionnaire evaluate key variables, while Pearson correlations and multivariate regression test the hypotheses. Results indicate statistically significant relationships (p=0.001) and a positive association between higher attachment and school commitment.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages6

Reading Time15 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

Attachment theory framework

Social control and connectedness framework

School engagement and peer relations

African Educational Research Journal Vol. 7(3), pp. 97-102, July 2019 ISSN: 2354-2160 Full Length Research Paper Parent and peer attachment and commitment to school: A correlational research involving high school Iranian students Karim Sevari* and Mehrdad Rezaei Department of Educational Psychology, University of Nour Payam, Ahwaz, Iran. Accepted 25 March, 2019 | ABSTRACT
This paper aims to study the relationship between parent attachment and peer attachment with commitment to school in a sample of 500 female and male students in 10th grade at a public high school in Bavi County, Khozestan Province. The sampling includes 500 10th grade high school students (250 girls and 250 boys) studying in the academic year of 2016-2017 in Bavi County. Multistage random sampling was used to select the sample students. An inventory of parent and peer attachment and a school commitment questionnaire are used to evaluate the intended variables. The data were analyzed using Pearson’s correlation analyses and multivariate regression. The results of this study shows that significance level at each of three hypotheses, which is equal to 0.001 for the intended variables, it is less than significance level of test (0 .05); therefore, peer and parent attachments have multiple relationships with commitment to school. So, the research results shows that parent attachment and commitment to school, which have high scores, have a positive relationship among these youths.
Keywords: Parent attachment, peer attachment, commitment to school. | | --- | | *Corresponding [author. E-mail: K_Sevari@pnu.ac.ir](author. E-mail: K_Sevari@pnu.ac.ir). | INTRODUCTION The constructs of parent and peer attachment and school connectedness are best viewed within the theoretical frameworks of attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969) and social control theory (Hirschi, 1969) . In general, attachment theory describes a fundamental normative process in early development defined in terms of behavioral and affective regulation. The most fundamental aspect of Bowlby’s attachment theory is its focus on the biological basis of attachment behavior. Infact, Bowlby defends that attachment behavior has the predictable outcome of increasing the proximity of the child to the attachment figure. For Bowlby, the strong tie between the attachment figure and the child, is evident , particularly when disrupted, and does not result from an associational learning process, but rather from a biologically based desire for proximity that arose through the process of natural selection (Cassidy, 1999) . Bowlby (1969) suggested also that behaviors of parents toward their children are inextricably linked to the type of attachments that children develop. A theory guides the research on school connectedness. Researchers investigating from a social learning perspective, i.e. , social control theory (Hirschi, 1969), suggest that adolescents learn social, behavioral, and school-related skills through interactions with peers and adults within social institutions, e.g. , a school (Murray and Greenberg, 2006) . A second perspective suggests that psychological experiences of having a strong sense of connectedness to a social institution is a basic psychological need that, when met, promotes the sense of comfort, engagement, motivation, and trust. Students’ engagement in school, seen as the experience of important connection of the student to the school, in specific dimensions – cognitive, affective, behavioral and personal agency (Veiga, 2012, 2013), has been operationalized as the extent to which students are committed to school and motivated to learn (SimonsMorton and Chen, 2009) and comes into sight related to peer relations. Estelle and Perdue (2013) studied the associations between peer support (and also parents and teachers support) on 5th grade children, and behavioral (work habits) and affective (school attachment) engagement in the 6th grade. This study indicated that peer support

FAQs

What variables does the study examine in relation to school commitment?

The study examines parent attachment and peer attachment as predictors related to school commitment among 10th-grade high school students.

How was the sample selected and what is the sample size?

The study uses multistage random sampling to select 500 students (250 girls and 250 boys) in the 10th grade.

Which statistical methods were used to analyze the data?

Data were analyzed using Pearson’s correlation analyses and multivariate regression.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Stanford