Perceived Parental Involvement and Psychological Capital among College Students: Mediating Role of Self-Identity

The relationship between perceived parental involvement and self-identity and psychological capital (goal orientation, optimism, self-efficacy, and resilience) was studied among college students. It was supposed that the perceived parental involvement would be positively related to self-identity and psychological capital and the relationship between the perceived parental involvement and the psychological capital would be mediated by self-identity. The research design was correlational. A purposive sample of 300 college students (Mage= 17 years, SD=1.19) was selected through the different colleges of Lahore in the government and the private sectors. The measures were the Helicopter Parenting Scale (LeMoyne & Buchanan, 2011), Self Concept & Identity Measure (Kaufman et al., 2015), and the Psychological Capital Scale (Batool et al., 2023), which involved subscales viz goals orientation, resilience, self-efficacy, and optimism. All measures were in their standardized form. Data was analyzed using SPSS; descriptive statistics, Pearson product-moment correlation, mediation using Hayes PROCESS macro (Model 4) were used. It was found that the perceived parental involvement had a positive correlation with self-concept, psychological capital, goal orientation, optimism, self-efficacy, and resilience. Psychological capital was also positively related to self-identity. Mediation analysis showed that self-identity significantly mediates the relationship between perceived parental involvement and psychological capital along with its four dimensions; goal orientation, resilience, self-efficacy and optimism. The study underscores the significance of perceived parental involvement in enhancing self-identity and psychological capital among college students.