Pro-social Behaviour of Lower Secondary Students and Their Parenting Styles

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to investigate pro-social behaviour of lower secondary students and their parenting styles. Survey method was used in this study. Data were collected through questionnaires. In order to collect the data, two questionnaires were constructed: pro-social personality battery (PSB) for student’s pro-social behaviour (consists of social responsibility scale, empathy scale, moral reasoning scale, and self-reported altruism scale) and parenting style questionnaire (consists of authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive) for their respective parents. The total number of 630 (315 males and 315 females) Grade 9 students and their respective parents from Yangon Region were participated. The required sample was selected by using random sampling technique. According to this study, there were no significant differences in prosocial behaviour and parenting styles according to student gender. Independent sample t-test pointed out that there was no significant difference in pro-social except empathy (p<0.05) behaviour between rural and urban. However, there were significant differences in authoritative parenting styles by region (p<0.01) and parent gender (p<0.05). Pearson correlation revealed that authoritative parenting style was positively significantly correlated with students’ pro-social behavior (p<0.01). Based on the effect of parenting style on students’ pro-socia