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Family Dinner Frequency, Parent-Organised Informal Learning Activities, and Student Academic Performance: Evidence from Chinese Eighth-Grade Students

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Abstract

The factors that influence student academic performance have long been discussed by academics. However, to our knowledge, there are no data on the informal learning activities organised by parents. Therefore, there is a need to explore how parents influence student academic performance. To do so, we acquired a dataset from the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS) to test the proposed measurements (e.g. the frequency of visiting museums with parents) through regression models. Several findings are summarised in the results. For instance, we found that there is a positive and significant association between parent-organised informal learning activities and student academic performance. Such a linkage can be negatively moderated by students' self-reported course difficulty in some cases (e.g. when students are frequently eating dinner with their parents). In terms of contribution, this study may be one of the first to discuss how parent-organised informal learning activities influence student academic performance.

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Data Availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, C. Zeng, upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We would wish to wholeheartedly thank the anonymous reviewers who provided insightful comments on earlier versions of the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. BNU-HKBU United International College, Zhuhai, Guangdong, People’s Republic of China

    Sujie Peng

  2. Foreign Language School Affiliated to Longhua Academy of Education and Sciences, Shenzhen, Guangdong, People’s Republic of China

    Chenying Zeng

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  1. Sujie Peng
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  2. Chenying Zeng
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by SP and CZ. The first draft of the manuscript was written by SP and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Chenying Zeng.

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Peng, S., Zeng, C. Family Dinner Frequency, Parent-Organised Informal Learning Activities, and Student Academic Performance: Evidence from Chinese Eighth-Grade Students. Asia-Pacific Edu Res 33, 625–633 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40299-023-00759-5

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