The Predictive Ability of Parenting Styles in ‎the Quality of Friendship among Adolescents

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the predictive power of parenting styles on the quality of friendship and whether there are significant gender differences in the quality of friendship among a sample of 398 seventh-grade male and female students selected using the available sample method for the academic year 2020–21.To achieve the objectives of the study, the friendship quality scale and \ scale of parenting styles were used after checking the validity and reliability indications. The results showed that the mean scores of the parenting style (authoritative, authoritarian) in the image of the father in males were higher than in females. The parenting styles (authoritarian and permissive) in the image of the mother were higher for males than for females, and the authoritative style was higher for females than for males. Also, in the dimension (closeness) in the friendship quality scale which was higher for females than for males, the results also showed that the variables (authoritative image of the father, authoritative image of the mother, authoritarian image of the mother, permissive image of the father) explained 25.30% of the variance in the quality of the friendship. Whereas, each of the following independent variables, respectively, for the parenting style (authoritative image of the father (19.70%), authoritative image of the mother (2.40%), authoritarian image of the mother (1.70%), and permissive image of the father (1.50%), contributed to the overall explanatory variance of the model predictive, while the percentage contribution to the interpretation of variance for the rest of the variables was not statistically significant at the level of significance (α = 0.05).