The Causal Relationship between Self-Compassion and Civic-Academic Behaviors: The Mediating Role of Parental Autonomy Support

Civic-academic behaviors provide the context of cooperation and participation in social interactions and are influenced by the antecedent variables of self-compassion and parental autonomy support. This study aimed to investigate the causal relationship between self-compassion and civic-academic behaviors with the mediating role of parental autonomy support.

This study was a correlational research of descriptive design. The study population consisted of all ninth and tenth grade students of Mahabad city in the academic year 2016-2017, among whom 645 students were selected by multistage cluster sampling method. The instruments of the study consisted of Neff's Self-Compassion Scale (2003), Civic-Academic Behaviors Scale (Golparvar, 2010) and Perceived Parenting Styles Survey (PPSS)) Grolnick, Deci, & Ryan, 1997). Data were analyzed by structural equation modeling and AMOS software (version 24).

According to the structural equation model, relationships between variables had an acceptable fit and the results showed that there was a significant relationship between self-compassion and civic-academic behaviors (p<0.01), self-compassion and parental autonomy support (p< 0.01), as well as parental autonomy support and civic-academic behaviors (p< 0.01). Findings indicate that self-compassion and parental autonomy support predict and explain 30 % of variance in civic-academic behaviors and self-compassion predicts 20% of variance in the parental autonomy support (P<0.01).

Based on the results of this study, parental autonomy support plays a significant mediating role in the relationship between self-compassion and civic- academic behaviors and facilitates the prediction of parental autonomy support in students. Therefore, training and enhancing self-compassion and parental autonomy support skills can enhance the academic performance and healthy social behaviors in students.