School refusal behavior and demography of caregivers among primary school students in Xianyang City in China

Abstract

Past researches on school refusal behavior have shown a significant correlation between family functioning and school refusal behavior. In China, the issue of having relative as caregiver other than a parent to care for a child is on the rise and past studies have shown that both-parents caregivers are more beneficial to students' mental health than other types of caregivers. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships and identify any significant differences between four types of caregivers and school refusal behavior among primary school students in three primary schools in Xianyang City, Shaanxi Province, China. In this quantitative study, a total of 160 primary school students in Year 6 who were raised by both-parents caregivers, singleparent caregivers, grandparents caregivers and other relative caregivers were involved as samples of the study. The data were collected through a questionnaire survey. Analysis of the data revealed that only the caregiver's occupation was significantly associated with school refusal behavior. In addition, there is no significant relationship between the other demography of caregivers, the gender of students, socioeconomic status level of grandparents caregivers and school refusal behavior. And there is no difference in school refusal behavior across male and female students and four types of caregivers. Overall, this study supports past and current findings on the relationship between demography of caregivers with school refusal behavior. Future research is suggested to investigate the issue of school refusal behavior with different instruments and a wider variety of respondents to enrich the research on this issue.