The Influence of Parenting Style, Peer Attachment, and Teacher Support on Personality Traits in Residential Secondary Schools

Abstract

This study aimed to examine the relationships between parenting style, peer attachment, teacher support, and personality traits among adolescents in residential secondary school settings in Malaysia. Guided by Adler's Individual Psychology and Bandura's Social Learning Theory, a quantitative survey design was employed involving 521 students aged 16 to 17 years, selected through stratified random sampling from residential secondary schools across multiple regions in Malaysia. The research instruments comprised the Big Five Inventory (BFI) to measure personality traits, the Parental Authority Questionnaire (PAQ) to assess parenting styles, the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (IPPA) to measure peer attachment, and the Child and Adolescent Social Support Scale (CASS) to assess teacher support. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis to identify the dominant predictors of adolescents' personality traits. The findings revealed significant positive relationships between parenting style, peer attachment, teacher support, and adolescents' personality traits. Multiple regression analysis indicated that teacher support, particularly the perceived importance of teacher support (? = .181, p < .001), emerged as the strongest predictor, followed by maternal parenting style (? = .166, p = .003) and peer attachment (? = .118, p = .010). The regression model explained 10.7% of the variance in adolescents' personality traits (R² = .107). These findings highlight the significant contribution of social support systems to adolescent personality development and provide empirical support for Adler's Individual Psychology and Bandura's Social Learning Theory within residential educational environments.