How parenting styles shape adolescents’ test anxiety: the mediating role of academic grit

This study examines the associations among parenting styles, academic grit, and adolescent test anxiety. Drawing on a sample of 26,897 seventh-graders from 90 Beijing junior secondary schools, the research utilized self-report measures of parental care, parental control, academic grit, and test anxiety. Adopting an integrative methodological perspective, the study combined partial correlation network analysis to examine the structural configuration of the psychological system and structural equation modeling (SEM) to estimate theoretically specified indirect associations. Network analysis indicated that academic grit-particularly the perseverance of effort dimension-occupied the most structurally central position within the associative network, linking parenting variables and test anxiety. Parental care and perseverance showed strong positive connections, whereas perseverance and consistency of interest were negatively connected with test anxiety. Within the SEM framework, parental care was positively associated with both dimensions of grit, which in turn were negatively associated with test anxiety. Parental control showed negative associations with grit and positive indirect associations with anxiety. Perseverance demonstrated stronger indirect associations with test anxiety than consistency of interest. Together, these findings suggest that academic grit is embedded in the relational structure connecting family context and test-related emotional experiences. By integrating network modeling with structural equation analysis, this study delineates both the structural prominence of grit within an associative system and the indirect relational pathways linking parenting styles and test anxiety.