Gender Differences in Assessing the Impact of Inter-Parental Conflict on Students Academic Achievement Motivation in Ruiru Sub County Kenya

Abstract

Research suggests children of different gender exposed to a similar environment of inter-parental conflict may have varying responses. While the impact of inter-parental conflict may be similarly damaging for both girls and boys, they may have different reactions to conflict and hostility between their parents. This necessitates the need to comprehensively understand why some children may be more vulnerable to the impact of inter-parental conflict than others. In this paper, the author seeks to establish the perception of who between the male and female students is mostly affected by inter-parental conflict in terms of academic achievement motivation. The study was guided by Fincham’s cognitive contextual framework theory and adopted a mixed method research design. A total of 281 students participated in the study. Purposeful sampling was used to select guidance and counseling teachers and parents of the students. Proportionate stratified sampling technique was used to select schools from the 13 public and 18 private schools in Ruiru sub-county as well as to select students from the chosen schools. Data was collected using four instruments: Children Perception of Inter-parental Conflict Questionnaire (CPIC) and Academic Motivation Survey (AMS) for Students, interview schedule for seven guidance and counseling teachers and focus group discussion for ten parents of the students. Data analysis was conducted both descriptively and using inferential statistics. In this, Pearson’s product moment correlation coefficient (r) was used to establish the relationship between inter-parental conflict and academic achievement motivation at 0.05 significance level. T-test was used to determine sex differences in inter-parental conflict and academic achievement motivation. The results were summarized in tables of frequency distribution and percentages. The results provided evidence that there was a significant gender difference with regard to inter-parental conflict and some domains of academic achievement motivation which were in favor of girls in both data sets.

Keywords: Inter-parental conflict, gender differences, students, Ruiru sub-county, children perception, Academic achievement motivation.