Do parental attitudes really matter to children's mathematics anxiety? A meta-analysis

Abstract

Parental attitudes toward mathematics are a potentially easy and effective intervention for lessening students’ mathematics anxiety. In this study, we examine the relationship between parental attitudes toward mathematics and their students’ mathematics anxiety. The goal is to provide empirical support for the development and proliferation of interventions to increase positive parental attitudes toward mathematics to achieve a decrease in students’ mathematics anxiety. Seventy-four abstracts of studies were identified through the electronic databases. Following review, we excluded 67 studies that did not meet all inclusion criteria. Therefore, the 7 studies in this meta-analysis consist of five peer-reviewed published studies and two dissertations. Of the 7 studies used for this meta-analysis, a total of 20 correlation coefficients were extracted. We found that the average correlation for the relationship between students’ mathematics anxiety and parents’ attitudes toward mathematics was -0.26, a small, though statistically significant, correlation. The inverse relationship indicates that as parents’ positive attitudes toward mathematics increase, their children’s anxiety decreases. Moreover, elementary and middle school students are much more affected by parents’ attitudes toward mathematics than are college students. Therefore, positive parental attitudes toward mathematics appear to have a positive influence on students’ mathematics anxiety and this provides a clue for how to involve parents in mathematics anxiety interventions.