Abstract
The problem that is addressed is how do we increase parental involvement time with their children. Some families did not seem to have a lot of family involvement time with their children. The purpose of this study is to improve family involvement in their child’s life. The participants are going to be caregivers and their child and this research will be taken at Head Start and Andy Taylor Center in Farmville, Va. The data that was collected was both quantitative and qualitative data. The quantitative data will be family annual income and the qualitative data will be overarching themes found form survey responses. The results for the quantitative data show that families with lower family annual income have more family involvement with their child. The qualitative data shows that there are three collective themes across most to all survey responses. The three themes are families enjoying the activities, the time spent together, and the families working together through the activities. The point of this study is to figure out if socio economics affects family involvement.
Introduction
The research problem is “How is family involvement affected by these activities and does socioeconomic status play a part in family involvement?” Several studies like Ogg, Rogers, & Volpe (2020) and Symeou, 2007; Altschul (2012) show the effects of economic standing on the family and its effects on family involvement. The potential issues with these articles are that some of them collect data from preschoolers through K12. This is an issue due to our focus audience being children in daycare/preschool aged children. Due to this the research can help with correlation but is not a perfect representation. This study can be useful for those who work in daycare/preschools or anyone who works with children. This is helpful for understanding how much family involvement a child is having because it affects their development.
Literature review
The main focus of this literature review is to examine family involvement and its effects on children’s education. We will examine using several themes of focus that help explain the effects of family involvement on children’s education. We are ideally connecting this information to the Head Start program and the Andy Taylor Center in Farmville, VA. In hopes of finding and helping broadening the ideas that may influence family involvement. The review focuses on three themes; socioeconomic status, make-up of the family (how the family is composed), and children’s disabilities. All are for the interest of having some form of connection for the Head start program in hopes to improve their work with parents and their children to increase family involvement.
The themes that we have come across for our topic relate to how family involvement has affected their child’s education due to socioeconomic status, family make-up of the caregiver(s), and disabilities present. The largest theme that has been found across several articles was socioeconomic status. There were conflicting views when it came to socioeconomic status in terms of its effects on a family’s involvement towards a child’s education. Parents were found to use their own education to help their child in their education (Symeou, 2007; Altschul, 2012). While another study found that took time to set aside to help their child with their work using their education and resources available would lead to increased family involvement and would sometimes be outsourced for tutors for when their own education wasn’t enough. (Ogg, Rogers, & Volpe, 2020).
The second theme is about family make-up of the caregiver(s). It was found that there is a difference between single parent households and two parent households in terms of family involvement with their child’s education (DeBell, 2008; Garg, Melanson, & Levin, 2007). Research found that a mother’s education tended to have more of an influence on their child’s education (Altschul, 2012; Chia, Peiyi, & Xinyan, 2011). Where a father’s education tended to not have a significant effect on their child’s education (Altschul, 2012; Debell, 2008). Jezierski and Wall (2019) argues that it isn’t about the parents’ direct effect on helping their child to do their homework which would help them in their education but that it is about aiding their children to become more self-reliant which then helps them in their pursuit of education.
The third theme has to deal with disabilities. It was found that there wasn’t a significant or any difference between parents in their involvement in their child’s education that has some form of disability and a parent’s involvement in their child’s education that does not have a form of disability (Ogg, Rogers, & Volpe, 2020; Zablotsky, Boswell, & Smith, 2012).
A majority of the articles used some form of national surveys related to family involvement in education with one of the mentioned themes, local surveys of schools around a certain area, and or made phone calls to collect survey data. Most of the studies included ages ranging from preschool-12th grade children. This is worrisome due to our project involving kids in preschool, respectfully. This information is still applicable due to the interest of family involvement in children’s education and it is almost universal that these themes have some/no effect on family involvement and the child’s education.
The focus of this is how socioeconomics, family make-up, and disabilities affect family involvement in a child’s education. I focused on these certain themes due interest in how there are many different types of families which in this case we looked at single parent and two parent families which can represent the children part of the Head start program. Socioeconomics was an interest from the start due to believing that a variable from this would affect parental involvement in a child’s education due to having more or less resources to their exposure, due to their status. Disabilities was an interest due to having several children part of the Head start programming have some form of disability and this could give better insight to improving family involvement. I originally suspected there would be more family involvement due to the parents wanting to help their child which wasn’t the case due to what the articles had stated. The purpose of this research is to improve family involvement with their child and to shed light on which variables help with improving family involvement.
Methods
A survey questionnaire was created by the 50 members of the Social Research and Program Evaluation team at Longwood University. The Survey asked both open and closed ended questions. Items on the survey were designed to evaluate SMART objectives of the five activities that were completed the previous week by Head Start and Andy Taylor Center Families. Items were included that also addressed demographic information, enjoyment of activities, family involvement, and completion of activities. Hard copies of the questionnaire were delivered to Head Start and the Andy Taylor Center.
The non-probability sample for this study was based on 100 children (ages three to five). Seventy-nine children attend Head Start in three counties. Head Start is a federally subsidized preschool for families with economic need. Twenty-one children attend the Andy Taylor Center which is located on a college campus, and families apply and pay for children to attend. Attached to the questionnaire was a children’s book to incentivize families to return the survey. Guardians of the Children were asked to complete the survey and return it to the preschool the next day. Teachers sent a reminder home with children to return any outstanding questionnaires. This resulted in 16 questionnaires being returned. Overall, there was a 16% response rate.
Quantitative analysis of the returned surveys are based on the close-ended questions. For this study the dependent variable is family involvement. The item from the questionnaire that was used to operationalize this was “How much did your family enjoy this activity?” The answer choices items were scaled from 1 to 10. One being not at all and 10 being a great amount. For this study the independent variable used is socioeconomic status. The item from the questionnaire that was used to operationalize this was “What is your annual household income? ?” The answer choices items were Less than $10,000, $10,000 – $30,999, $31,000 – $50,999, $51,000 – 70,999, $71,000 – $90,999, $91,000 or more, and Prefer not to answer. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze these variables.
Qualitative analysis of the returned surveys was based on open-ended questions. The open-ended questions on the survey were “What did your family enjoy most about these activities? Why?”, “What did your child learn from these activities?”, and “What recommendations would you suggest to make these activities better?” To answer the research question, “How is family involvement affected by these activities and does socioeconomic status play a part in family involvement? Inductive open coding was used to determine recurring themes in the respondent’s responses. It was found that socioeconomic status does have an effect on family involvement (Symeou, 2007; Altschul, 2012). Another article would both show improvement in family involvement due to having more in terms of economics and decrease family involvement. If the parents had a lot of money but not a significant enough education then they would outsource to hiring a tutor which decreases family involvement (Ogg, Rogers, & Volpe, 2020).
Quantitative
Our quantitative finding for this study is “how involved was your family throughout the activity?” which was weighted on a 0 – 10 scale. The mean for our sample is an 8.14 which means that the families had a positive reaction finding that the family was found to be active throughout the activity. The standard deviation for this sample was 2.56 which tells us that parents had variety in their options on the activities.
The quantitative question is “What is your annual household income?” What follows is the data showing how many families choose to answer this question: “Less than $10,000” had 4 answers, “$10,000 – $30,000” had 2 answers, “$51,000 – $70,999” had zero answers, $71,000 – $90,999 had 1 answer, “$91,000 or more” had 1 answer, and “Prefer not to answer had 4 answers. (See “Fig. 1: Family annual income”)
The family involvement mean for each group is as followed: “Less than $10,000” has 9.666667, “$10,000 – $30,000” has 9.0, “$31,000 – $50,999” has 10.0, “$51.000 – $70,999 is none reported, “$71,000 – $90,000” has 1.0, “$91,000 or more” has 5.0, and “Prefer not to answer” has 7.666667. Family involvement for those families who make “Less than $10,000, $10,000 – $30,999, $31,000 – $50,999 and, Prefer not to answer” is high. While family involvement for families that make “$71,000 – $90,000, $91,000 or more” is low. No Families claimed to have any family involvement if they made $51,000 – $70,999. Based on how the data is represented there are two ways to interpret the data. Either there is more family involvement the less money a family makes, which we have to keep in mind. One of the facilities, out of the two, we sent surveys to was a day care primarily funded via the government or there is no pattern due to having a small sample. This sample is small with a total of 16 surveys returned. This being said, take caution when interpreting and using this data for further research studies.
Qualitative
The activities all have three overarching themes: families enjoying the activities, the time spent together, and the families working together through the activities. Eleven surveys share the theme of “enjoying the activity”, 4 surveys shared the theme of “time spent together”, and 6 surveys shared the theme of working together. The first major theme found was “families enjoying the activities.” In survey number 2 the survey taker has stated “I enjoyed watching (child) complete the activities while I assist her.” This also shares the same theme as working together due to the survey taker stating “while I assist her.” Survey number 7 stated that “We enjoyed putting all different shapes together on the pizza survey.” This is also showing that the family is working together and that the family is working together.
The second major theme that was found in the surveys is “time spent together.” In survey number fifthteen the survey taker stated “Spending time together doing something educational is always fun. Family time.” In survey number 4 the survey taker stated “Time spent together. the talks , learning.” This was related to the question of “What did your family enjoy most about these activities?” Both answers show some form of time spent together between the survey taker and the child who completed the survey together.
The third major theme found was “Working together.” This was expressed through survey number 5, the survey taker said “It’s fun when you want to do something fun and enjoyable for kids and family…” In another survey, number 8 had stated that “seeing her helping me with the activities and having a good time” which is referring to the question “What did your family enjoy most about these activities?” This shows that families are working together to complete the activities together. Which is showing some form of family involvement.
Each theme that was focused on shared one or more themes between each other. Overall the main ideas are that these activities have caused family involvement to happen. Based on how some parents seem to enjoy the activities and working together with their child, this can go to show there is some potential for increased family involvement happening with these activities. Based on the interconnected replies with some of the surveys that cover multiple themes it does show at the very least that family involvement is occuring.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there has been some evidence to conclude that socioeconomic status can have an affect on family involvement. It just is not clear which side of the economic scale has a higher family involvement rate. The literature review showed via Ogg, Rogers, & Volpe, (2020) that socioeconomic status can lead to both increased and decreased family involvement when it comes to their child’s education. While the study Symeou, 2007; Altschul, (2012) showed that family involvement can be increased when a child receives help from their parents due to education. Our research that was conducted, specifically the quantitative data, shows that families with lower income have a higher family involvement. While our qualitative data showed that these activities did have a significant amount of family involvement. That all being noted, socioeconomic status does affect family involvement, but it is not clear if it increases family involvement or if it decreases family involvement.
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