How the ‘Parents as influencers of university choices’ report will help you:
- Further improve your knowledge and understanding of how parents influence young people’s university decision-making and what information drives their thinking
- Assist your marketing, recruitment and outreach teams to approach engagement of parents in a smarter and more effective way using independently generated national insight which is available to them right now
- Attract students to your institution by using this insight to inform your strategies for this and future academic years
We also repeated this project in 2021, to update insight following the Covid-19 pandemic so you may be interested in the details about that more recent project.
More about the parents as influencers project
This research project was based on an online quantitative survey with 2,500 parents and an online qualitative community of 54 parents of young people aged 16 to 18 in the UK. The report was completed in January 2019.
The full report explores parental influence on their children’s decision-making around higher education and includes a review of the existing literature, an executive summary and practical recommendations.
Report contents include:
- What aspirations parents have for their children and how much impact these have on their children’s decisions
- Parents’ perceptions and level of university knowledge and how it affects children’s perceptions and decisions
- How parents formulate their opinions about university and where they get their information from
- What information parents need from universities to assist their child in making decisions about their future
- Parents’ priorities when helping their children make decisions about universities
- What other factors, including parents’ and children’s background, may have an impact on the above.
Project partners
This project was developed in partnership with a number of clients who helped to shape the research design through our collaborative University Futures model. With thanks to:
- King’s College London
- London School of Economics (LSE)
- Manchester University
- University of Birmingham
- University of East Anglia
- University of Edinburgh
- University of Exeter
- University of Sunderland