Date on Master's Thesis/Doctoral Dissertation

12-2014

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph. D.

Department (Legacy)

Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology, Counseling, and College Student Personnel

Committee Chair

Adelson, Jill Lynn

Committee Co-Chair (if applicable)

Gross, Jacob P. K.

Committee Member

Snyder, Kate E.

Committee Member

Valentine, Jeffrey C.

Subject

Parent-teacher relationships; Home and school; Academic achievement

Abstract

This dissertation study explored the relationship between school-based parent involvement and early reading outcomes by positing that different types of parent involvement activities reflect access to different forms of cultural capital and therefore should be analyzed as separate constructs. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) techniques were used to establish the factor structure underlying measures of school-based parent involvement available in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort of 2011 (ECLS-K: 2011). Also of interest were the variations in the amount of participation in different types of involvement between families from various sociocultural backgrounds, as well as the relationships between different types of parent involvement and early reading achievement outcomes among these groups. Before such comparisons were made, a series of multiple groups CFA models were run to establish measurement invariance among the parent involvement factors. Data were analyzed across racial/ethnic, parent education, parent occupational prestige, and primary language subgroups. Two achievement outcomes, reading IRT scores and teacher literacy ratings, were modeled separately, to determine if the observed relationships held across achievement outcomes. Finally, all analyses were conducted separately for two school types: public and non-public schools. Results indicated three components of school-based parent involvement that aligned with differences in cultural capital requirements. Subgroup differences in average values of a subset of the parent involvement factors were observed, as well as differences in the relationships between the parent involvement types and student achievement outcomes. Differences in these relationships were also observed across school type. Several directions for future research based on these findings are discussed.

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