Parental Treatment Methods And Their Role In Predicting Children’s Quality Of Life In Secondary School

Abstract

In this study we discuss parental treatment methods (PTMs) and their role in predicting the quality of life (QoL) of children in general education and specifically secondary school in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. We used the descriptive approach and the World Health Organization’s (WHO) abbreviated QoL measure as well as parental authority questionnaire PTMs (father’s image, mother’s image) on a sample of 182 male and female secondary school students. After ascertaining the psychometric characteristics of the study tools, we found three types of PTMs: authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive. We also found a high level of QoL across its different domains. They showed differences in the various components of QoL among secondary school students attributable to gender for the benefit of males. Furthermore, our findings demonstrated the predictability of QoL through PTMs and specifically the authoritative father’s style across all domains of QoL except for physical health. Our findings also showed that the QoL of the student sample with the inclusion of information about gender is predictable across all domains except for environment. We recommend that parents’ pay attention to cultivating their children’s self-confidence, thereby contributing to improving their QoL.