# “It All Comes Down to the Teens”: An Actor-Partner-Interdependence Model of Trust, Engagement and Satisfaction With the School in Parent-Adolescent Dyads

## TL;DR

The study shows that student engagement connects trust in school with satisfaction for both students and parents, especially in adolescent-parent pairs.

## Contribution

The study introduces a dyadic analysis of school trust, engagement, and satisfaction using an actor-partner interdependence model.

## Key findings

- Student engagement mediates trust in school and satisfaction for both students and parents.
- Female students report higher engagement and satisfaction than male students.
- Parental trust in school positively affects both parental and student satisfaction.

## Abstract

Our study underscores the relevance of focusing on parent-adolescent dyads in order to understand the interplay between school trust, engagement and satisfaction with the school by testing a model in which school engagement mediates the association between trust in the school and satisfaction with the school.

We use an actor-partner-interdependence-model to test the mediating role of school engagement between trust and satisfaction with the school in 506 parent-adolescent dyads in Romania.

The results show that when these variables are jointly evaluated in parent-adolescent dyads, only student engagement is a significant dyadic (couple) mediator, such that it is positively predicted both by student and parental trust in the school and predicts both student and parental satisfaction with the school. Our results also reveal a partner only effect on parental school engagement that is positively predicted by student trust in the school. Moreover, our results also reveal that parental trust in the school has a positive association with parental as well as student satisfaction with the school. An emergent result is that female students report a higher engagement and satisfaction with the school than male students do.

In line with our results, we urge school administrators to provide resources and create platforms for a joint involvement of parents and adolescents in relevant school-related activities.