Parental Acceptance-Rejection and Delinquent Behaviour among Adolescents: A Case Study of Slum Areas of Islamabad

Shaista Zafar & Dr. Seema Gul

Abstract
The present study intended to explore the relationship between
parental acceptance-rejection and delinquent behaviour among the
adolescents of slum areas. The study sample consisted of 200 adolescents
having an equal number of boys (n=100) and girls (n=100) with the age
range of 13-17 years and informants (n=188) within the age range of 28-
60 from the slum areas of Islamabad. The sample was approached from
the slums of F-7 sector, Fauji Colony and Railway track near H-10 sector
with the help of convenient sampling technique. To measure the
perception of adolescents about their parents the Urdu translated Child
version of Parental Acceptance-Rejection questionnaire (Rohner, 2005;
Malik, 2011) was used. The reliability coefficient for Father Version and
Mother Version was calculated to be .89 and .90 respectively. Whereas,
for measuring the delinquent tendencies Self-Reported Delinquency Scale
(SRDS) and Informant Reported Delinquency Scale (IRDS) (for boys)
and SRDS-F and IRDS-F(for girls) were used. Strong correlation was
found between all the measures that were significant at p<0.01. Results
suggested that boys and girls do not have differential perception of
parental acceptance-rejection and both genders have equal likelihood of
developing delinquent behaviour. Result also showed significant tendency
of delinquent behaviour among adolescents who perceived more parental
rejection than acceptance at p<0.01.

Key words: Parental Acceptance-Rejection, Delinquent Behaviour, Slum
Areas, Self