Projected Results and Discussion

The purpose of this study will be to determine if family structure and parental support significantly affects academic performance and social behaviors such as drug and alcohol use and delinquent and deviant behavior.

Possible Outcome #1: Persons raised in single parent families perceive their parents as less supportive in comparison to persons from two parent families. The proposed reason for this result is that single parents have multiple roles (household, financial, educational, motivational, and emotional) to balance without the help of a partner.

Possible Outcome # 2: Persons from both family structures will perform better academically, will use less drugs and alcohol and exhibit less delinquent and deviant behavior, if their parent or parents are more supportive. This result will emphasize that it is in fact parental support and not the absence of a parent that is responsible for lower academic level, and more frequency of drug and alcohol abuse, and delinquent and deviant behavior.

One possible limitation of this study will be the convenient sample size that will be used. The sample size will not be representative of the population since it will possibly consist of primarily female students pursuing a psychology major. Thus, this may affect the effect size for gender. Another possible limitation of the study will be participants providing fictitious information. This may especially occur with questions concerning drug and alcohol use and delinquent and deviant behavior especially if the participant is not of legal age.

Previous research has determined that family structure affects academic performance and social behavior. However, as this study may possibly show, is that parental support plays a major role in a person’s development. Future studies can take into effect not only how persons perceive their parent’s support level but also how the parent’s perceive their own parental support as well.