The Study of Parent’s Decisions to Enrol Their Children in child center at Mae-ai Sub-District Municipality, Mae-ai District, Chaingmai Province.

Abstract

The objectives of the case study were to: 1) study the decisions of the parents who sent their children to study at the Child Development Center in Mae Ai Subdistrict, Mae Ai District, Chiang Mai Province, Thailand, and 2) compare the data by using the parents’ demographic backgrounds such as gender, age, relationship with students, level of education, occupation and income. The samples were from parents of 164 students at six different Child Development Centers in the Mae Ai Subdistrict in 2011. The research instrument used was a questionnaire with a confidence level of .93. Data were analyzed by using frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, the One-way ANOVA test and Scheffé’s method.

The findings revealed the following;

1).The majority of the parent respondents were female (65.24%). 52.44% of the respondents had a lower education level than a high school diploma. 61.58% were workers, and 54.87% earned less than THB 5,000 per month.

2).The decision of parents who sent their children to study in the Child Development Center were high overall, with a mean of 3.89 and standard deviation of .44. Considering each aspect, the factors that had the most influence were the quality of the administrators and teachers, followed by the quality of academic knowledge, the quality of buildings and environment, the relationship between the child centers and communities, and the quality of students, respectively.

3).By comparing the data received, the results showed that parents with different demographic backgrounds (such as gender, age, relationship with students, level of education, occupation and income) had no significant difference in their overall decisions.  However, when comparing each aspect, the result showed that the parents who had different incomes made decisions differently at a .05 level of significance.