This article studies how parenting styles and the parent-child relationship factors affect high school students’ decision-making regarding ​college major choices. It first identifies the factors that shape such decisions and then examines the correlation between parenting styles, the ​parent-child relationship, and the identified factors. Preliminary interviews with high school students revealed that students consistently ​prioritize the four factors when deciding on a college major: personal interests, employment prospects, personal abilities (proficiency in a ​field), and family considerations. Data for further analysis were obtained through a survey questionnaire combining these four factors with ​the S-EMBU parenting style measurement and a scale gauging the closeness between parents and children. In summary, parental rejection ​positively correlates with students’ propensity to consider employment prospects when selecting a college major. The same positive ​correlation was found between overprotection and students’ priority consideration of personal interests and between the closeness in parent-​child relationships and preference given to personal abilities.


Keywords: choices of college major, parenting style, parent-children relationship

Introduction

Chinese consumers’ increasing demand for counseling on college major choices is most evident in the flourishing market for the price ​premium on college counselors’ services. This trend justifies the need to understand what factors contribute to students’ decision-making of ​their college majors.

Early research on child development (Dornbusch, Ritter, Leiderman, Roberts, & Fraleigh, 1987; Steinberg, Lamborn, Dornbusch, & ​Darling, 1992) established a significant correlation between parenting styles and children’s behavioral outcomes. Carpenter (1980) discovered ​that a parenting style featuring greater parental involvement could mitigate the disparity between career aspirations and career expectations. ​Niu (2016) took a further step to identify that students who are frequently exposed to task-extrinsic rewards from parents are 12 percent less ​likely to opt for STEM majors in college compared to their peers free from such parental intervention. There are also a few research that ​determined the association between parenting and children’s career decision-making process to be insignificant (Bennett-Garraway, 2014). ​Despite the controversies, the majority of the academic literature studying parental styles’ impact on children's careers or major choices ​confirms the link. However, there's hardly any research explaining specifically how parenting style and parent-child relationships interact ​with the primary factors Chinese students consider when choosing a major.

To identify the factors that affect students' decision-making process when choosing a major, this paper conducted one-on-one interviews with ​a subset of the surveyed students. Based on the findings, the paper developed a questionnaire that focuses on personal interests, employment ​prospects, personal abilities, and family factors. The goal of the study was to determine how parental style and parent-child relationships ​positively impact one of these four factors. The study's conclusions will provide valuable suggestions for both families and individual ​students as they navigate their future major choices and parenting. This innovative research direction has the potential to offer new insights.

Methods


Study 1

The purpose of Study 1 was to investigate the factors that students consider when choosing a college major.

Participants

We interviewed a total of 7 high school students currently attending Beijing 101 International Department. Among them, there were 3 female ​students and 4 male students, ranging in age from 16 to 18 (3 freshmen, 2 sophomores, and 2 seniors). All seven participants were native ​Chinese speakers and had plans to study abroad.

Materials

The main goal of this research was to explore the factors students take into account when choosing a college major. Therefore, we conducted ​open-ended interviews with the central question, "What factors do you consider when choosing a college major?"

Procedure

Each interview began with the question, "What factors do you consider when choosing a college major?" Following that, I inquired about the ​importance they assigned to these factors and posed two additional questions related to major selection: "Have you discussed your college ​major choice with family, teachers, or other mentors? How did their opinions influence your decision?" and "Have you considered the impact ​of the chosen major on your personal development and growth?" I recorded the participants' responses using a smartphone during the ​interviews.

Results

By tallying the responses from the 50 participants, we summarized the directions in which they considered factors when choosing a college ​major. The results showed that personal interest (mentioned 43 times), employment prospects (mentioned 38 times), personal abilities/skill ​proficiency in the major (mentioned 32 times), and family factors (mentioned 26 times) were significant considerations.Therefore, we can conclude that when deciding on a college major, students tend to prioritize personal interest, employment prospects, ​personal abilities, and family factors.

Participants

As the target audience mainly consists of middle school, high school, and college students, I distributed questionnaires in friend circles, ​school groups, and peer groups. Ultimately, I received a total of 200 survey responses. After excluding unreasonable responses through ​attention monitoring questions and organizing the questionnaire results (e.g., excluding surveys where all answers were the same or ​contradictory), 199 valid surveys remained. In the final sample, there were 58 male participants (29.1%) and 141 female participants (70.8%). ​The average age was 17 years (with a standard deviation of 3.5), ranging from 13 to 35 years. All participants were native Chinese speakers.

Materials

In this study, I utilized the S-EMBU (Arrindell et al., 1999) scale to measure parenting styles. S-EMBU, a short version of EMBU (Perris et ​al., 1980), focuses on children's memories of parental behavior to infer parenting styles. The S-EMBU scale extracts the main dimensions of ​overprotection, emotional warmth, and rejection from the original EMBU, simplifying the questionnaire to 23 questions. Rejection is ​characterized by critical parenting, emotional warmth reflects acceptance and support, while overprotection involves a high degree of control ​over a child's safety (Yangzong et al., 2016). To streamline data collection, individual evaluations for fathers and mothers were combined.

Regarding the four factors, I formulated 3-4 questions for each, such as exploring "personal interests" or "employment prospects." ​Additionally, six universal questions were devised to assess parent-child relationships.

Procedure
The first page of the questionnaire asked participants if they were willing to partake in the study and respond attentively. Those who agreed ​proceeded to the next page, while those who declined ended the questionnaire.

All questions are matrix-scale items rated on a scale of 1 to 9, where 1 represents "completely disagree" and 9 represents "completely agree."

The second page included questions about the four factors, with an attention check question placed as the ninth item. If participants were ​genuinely answering, they were asked to select option 2.

The third page comprised the 23-item S-EMBU scale, with adjustments made to combine ratings for both parents. An attention check was ​excluded for simplicity in data analysis.

The fourth page featured the Parent-Child Relationship scale, with an attention check question included. Participants were asked to select ​the sum of 3 + 4 if they were genuinely answering.

Lastly, before concluding the questionnaire, participants were asked for personal information, including gender, age, and education level.

Results
I used formulas:

x=Σxi/n (xi = ith observation, xi= sum of observations, n= number of observations)

to calculate the average scores for each person who participated in the survey in terms of their personal interests, employment prospects, ​family factors, personal abilities, rejection, emotional warmth, overprotection, and parent-child relationship closeness.

Next, I conducted a correlation matrix analysis for all these variables to figure out how they are interconnected and influence each other.

To ensure the accuracy of the data, we need to analyze values with a p-value less than 0.05, leading to the following conclusions:

1. The closer the parent-child relationship, the more likely students are to consider personal interests when choosing a major.

2. The more emotional warmth parents provide during upbringing, the more likely students are to consider personal interests when choosing ​a major.

3. The closer the parent-child relationship, the more likely students are to consider personal abilities when choosing a major.

4. The more parents reject their children during upbringing, the worse their parent-child relationship tends to be.

5. The more emotional warmth parents provide during upbringing, the better the parent-child relationship tends to be.

6. The more parents overprotect their children during upbringing, the worse their parent-child relationship tends to be.

Next, we will perform linear regression on rejection, emotional warmth, overprotection, parent-child relationship, and the factors considered ​by students when choosing a major (personal interests, employment prospects, family factors, and personal abilities). This will help us ​identify which variable can predict the factors students prioritize when selecting a major.

Personal interests:

Because only the p-value for Overprotection is less than 0.05, it indicates that only Overprotection (0.2181) can positively predict personal ​interests. In other words, the higher the level of Overprotection, the more likely students are to consider personal interests when choosing ​their majors.

Employment prospects

Rejection and the parent-child relationship can both positively predict future job prospects. The coefficient for Rejection (0.3442) is larger ​than that for the Parent-child relationship (0.2830), meaning that the more parents reject their children, the more likely students are to ​consider job prospects when choosing a college major.
Family factors:


In this set of data, none of the P values are less than 0.05. Therefore, no variable can predict how family factors will be considered when ​thinking about college.

Personal abilities

Rejection and relationship closeness can both positively predict how much students consider personal abilities when thinking about college. ​The coefficient for Parent-child relationship (0.33814) is larger than the coefficient for Rejection (0.28953), indicating that the higher the ​Relationship Closeness, the more students will consider personal abilities when contemplating their college major.

Discussion

Possible explanations

Result 1: The higher the level of Overprotection, the more likely students are to consider personal interests when choosing their majors.Being overly protective as a parent can have long-term effects on a child's growth. On one side, kids might rebel against what their parents ​expect from them (Arzt, 2023). So, to go against their parents' expectations, students might be more likely to follow their own ideas and ​choose a major that genuinely interests them.

Result 2: The more parents reject their children, the more likely students are to consider job prospects when choosing a college major.When parents reject their children, it can lead to a bunch of negative effects like facing bullying or disobedience and even feeling anxious on ​the inside (Krieger & Connecticut, 2021). This kind of anxiety comes in different forms. With rapid changes happening in the economy and ​society, students experiencing this anxiety might worry more about having fewer job opportunities in the future. As a result, when they're ​choosing a major in college, they might think a lot about which field has better job prospects.


Result 3: The higher the Relationship Closeness, the more students will consider personal abilities when contemplating their college major.A close and secure relationship with parents is good for a child's mind, language skills, and emotions. It also helps the child act positively and ​confidently in social situations (Parenting NI, 2018). When kids feel close to their parents, they tend to be more optimistic and confident ​about their social behavior. We can think of this confidence spreading out, and it might be one reason why they choose college majors based ​on their personal abilities and strengths.

Future direction and limitations


For Study 1
The sample size of Study 1 can be increased to enhance the generalizability and reliability of study findings. A more extensive and diverse ​group of participants can provide a broader perspective on the factors influencing students' choices in selecting a college major.While Study 1 employed a basic counting method for statistical analysis, there is room for improvement by incorporating more advanced ​techniques, such as Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA). EFA can unveil hidden patterns within the data, offering a deeper understanding of ​the relationships among variables and improving the overall robustness of the study.
For Study 2
The observation that the significance of Study 2's conclusions falls within the range of 0.2 to 0.4 suggests that the findings may not be ​strongly conclusive. This could be due to various factors, including a limited sample size. Increasing the sample size would likely provide a ​more accurate representation of the population and could lead to more decisive and reliable results.

The discussion of inconsistencies in data analysis focuses on the apparent contradiction between the positive predictive nature of rejection ​and relationship closeness on the consideration of employment prospects. The proposed interpretations offer plausible explanations for this ​paradox, linking rejection to job anxiety and relationship closeness to a desire for improved financial outcomes for parents.

The cautionary note on possible explanations emphasizes the indirect nature of these deductions. While the paper draws conclusions from the ​data, there is acknowledgment that these interpretations are based on correlations and associations. To enhance the validity of these ​explanations, it is suggested that future experimental research be conducted to empirically validate the proposed inferences.

References

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