Parents' assessments of their children's abilities

Conducted in the framework of the theory of social representations, the study was designed to examine the dimensions in terms of which parents assess their children's abilities, the ways in which social positions - here, the parents' education and gender and the child's gender - organize these assessments, and the ways in which the assessments relate to the estimated school success of the child. The subjects were a nationwide sample of parents (N = 938), who were asked to estimate their children's school success and to assess these children's abilities. A factor analysis showed the ability assessments to be multidimensional. The parents assessed girls' cognitive and social abilities to be better than boys'. Academically educated parents drew a more categorical distinction than other parents between cognitive and other abilities, which suggests that they endorse a differential conception of intelligence. A clear congruity of content was observed between the estimations of school success and the assessments of abilities, indicating that different school subjects are associated with different abilities.