Influence of parenting styles on social behavioural problems of female students in Njoro campus, Egerton University, Kenya

Abstract

Parenting styles is the way in which parents raise their children. It refers to the level of parents’ expectations, performance demands and attentiveness to rules by their children. Female students face numerous challenges affecting their adjustment to university life due to various factors. Such factors may be the student’s personality, their environment, and peer influence, among others. The issue of parenting styles and female students’ social behavioural problems specifically in Egerton University, Njoro Campus has not been studied. Therefore, this study sought to investigate the influence of parenting styles on undergraduate female students’ social behavioural problems in Egerton University, Njoro Campus. The study employed descriptive research design. The target population for this study was 7547 undergraduate female students of Egerton University, Njoro Campus. However, the accessible population was 1458 undergraduate second year female students from which a sample of 302 second year undergraduate female students was derived using the Kathuri and Pals (1993) table. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from the second year undergraduate female students. To establish the reliability of the questionnaire, the instruments were piloted with 30 respondents at the Nakuru Town University Campus of Egerton University. This was to ascertain the reliability coefficient at 0.70 level of significance using Cronbach’s Alpha. Data analysis was done using descriptive statistics such as frequencies, percentages and means. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25 was used. For inferential statistics, Chi-square was used to establish association between parenting styles and its influence on female student’s social behavioural problems at 0.05 level of significance. The study concluded that authoritative parenting is the dominant parenting style among parents/guardians of undergraduate female students at Egerton University, Njoro campus. The findings also revealed that parenting styles significantly influence female students’ social behavioural problems in Egerton University, Njoro Campus. The study recommends that the Ministry of Education; Ministry of Public Service, Youth and Gender; policy makers, NGOs; Chief’s Barazas and churches organize forums where parents are guided and encouraged to adopt authoritative parenting style; balance their time; use Guidance and Counselling and inductive reasoning. Extensive studies were suggested for both male and female students to unravel the relationship between parenting styles and the students’ social behavioural problems in all universities.