Perceived parental involvement and student engagement with homework in secondary school: The mediating role of self-handicapping

Research in the field of homework has confirmed the significant association between students’ perceptions of their parents’ involvement and their motivation and engagement with these tasks. In this study we analyzed the possible mediating role of self-handicapping strategies in the relationship between perceptions of parental support (content-oriented and autonomy-oriented support) when doing homework and the students’ behavioral engagement (time spent, effort made, amount of homework done, level of procrastination). The participants were 643 students in compulsory secondary education (between 7th and 10th grade). The results showed that the lower the perceptions of support from parents when doing homework, the greater the students’ use of self-handicapping strategies and the worse their behavioral engagement (less effort, less amount of homework done, more procrastination) and vice versa. These findings seem to indicate that self-handicapping is a motivational strategy that would partially explain students’ poor behavioral engagement with homework in the absence of parental support.