Abstract
Children in families of low socioeconomic status (SES) are not doing as well as they can in school. This can result in the continued low SES of the family over multiple generations. One possible solution to this is to increase family involvement. The parent or parents usually have to work longer hours than most people to make the money they need to sustain their family. This leads to less time spent together. Multiple studies have shown that more family involvement positively correlates to a child’s higher academic achievement (Ansari & Gershoff, 2016; Coba-Rodriguez, Cambray-Engstrom & Jarrett, 2020; Day & Dotterer, 2018; Shanti, 2017; Gordon & Cui, 2014; Goshin, Dubrov, Kosaretsky, & Grigoryev, 2021; Perriel, 2015; Shanti, 2017; Taliaferro, DeCuir, & Allen, 2009). In this study, our research group created activities for parents and children, from Head Start and Andy Taylor Center, to do together and surveys that we wanted them to fill out and return. The purpose of this study was to increase family involvement and figure out what activities these families enjoyed the most. The data that will be collected will be from the surveys. The survey included open and closed-ended questions. The qualitative section included short answer questions that pertained to which activities were the most enjoyable and why, what did the children learn, how can the activities be improved, and a few multiple-choice questions on the specific activities. The quantitative section included data like total household income, level of parent involvement on a scale of 1-10, and level of enjoyment on a scale of 1-10. The possible themes that can arise from this study are fun activity for the family to do, changes to the activities, and what did the child learn? The primary statistical findings of this study include the household income of the families and the mean involvement of each family within the specified income ranges. The practical implications of this study include the kind of activities the families involved enjoyed the most, what activities would work in the future, and what can be changed to improve the activities. I believe these findings can lead to further research on how to increase family involvement in ways that will increase academic achievement among the children.
Introduction
Parents of low-income families sometimes to lack time and money to spend those two resources with their children. Head Start is a program specifically aimed at helping families of low income find activates to do together. Andy Taylor center aims to do the same thing; however, the families of this program are usually of a higher economic class. There have been multiple studies on family involvement among low-income families. A good amount of those studies are related to the correlation between family involvement and the child’s academic achievement. These studies had deficiencies. Those include a low number of participants and the age of the participants in some of the studies. If these studies can become more widespread and thorough, and subsequent policy change, then I believe the children of the low-income families can receive the education they need to obtain better paying jobs in the future. In this study, we created activities for families to do in order to measure the enjoyment of the activities, level of family involvement, and how much the child learned. Among that data, we also collected demographic information.
Literature Review
Parent involvement, which can be defined as the time and energy a parent invests in their child’s life and wellbeing, in a child’s education has proven to be beneficial by multiple studies (Ansari & Gershoff, 2016; Coba-Rodriguez, Cambray-Engstrom & Jarrett, 2020; Day & Dotterer, 2018; Shanti, 2017; Gordon & Cui, 2014; Goshin, Dubrov, Kosaretsky, & Grigoryev, 2021; Perriel, 2015; Shanti, 2017; Taliaferro, DeCuir, & Allen, 2009). Different strategies of parental involvement have been found, SES has been taken into account, and people from different racial/ethnic backgrounds have all been included in some way in multiple studies.
Some strategies for parent involvement, like those found in a study done by Shanti (2017), involve personnel who travel out to the home of the parents and children. The study done by Coba-Rodriguez, Cambray-Engstrom, and Jarrett (2020) proved that parental involvement has a positive correlation on their child’s academic performance. Different parental strategies had an effect on the child’s academics, which was found in a study done by Goshin, Dubrov, Kosaretsky, and Grigoryev (2021). In a study done by Gordon and Cui (2014), the researchers found that higher poverty led to a weaker positive correlation between parental involvement and their child’s academic achievement. In a study done by Day and Dotterer (2018), the sample was of a diverse set of people from different racial/ethnic backgrounds. Their study combined the diversity with low SES and concluded that there was a connection between parental involvement and the academic outcome of their children. This relates to my other studies through the scope of SES, but also includes the aspect of diversity. Day and Dotterer (2018) found that there was a connection between parental involvement and children’s academic outcomes, but did not go much further in describing what this correlation was. These studies surely do not cover all the aspects of the strategies of parent involvement, effects of low SES, or all the experiences from all races/ethnic background, but more studies in the future can give sociologist a better understanding of all three of those concepts.
One study by Ansari and Gershoff (2016) paired with a program called Head Start, which is one of the same programs I will be pairing up with in my current study. One question that can be answered by that, is how can we raise awareness, help, or persuade more parents to become involved in their child’s education? It can be hypothesized that if more parents become involved in their child’s education, then the issue of coming from a family of low SES can be solved.
All these studies are interrelated on their wanting to study and analyze low SES families. Some of the studies here only view children/parents who are in high school, which is good, but more data on the younger population is needed. These studies are also not very big in terms of their sample sized ranging from 4 families (Shanti, 2017) to just over 1,000 (Ansari & Gershoff, 2016). The latter half of the articles reviewed here seemed to take data from larger studies that were already done. This is a critique because they are not getting the most recent data by pulling from studies that have already been conducted.
In the study done by Taliaferro, DeCuir, and Allen (2009), the authors found that the staff of the school had either mixed to bad opinions of parental involvement, so future studies should focus on how to change these attitudes from the school do not deter parental involvement. While the studies I have here focus on the strategies, race/ethnicity, and SES, and their effects of academic outcomes, the study I will be conducting answer the following question: what affect does family fun time activities have on parent involvement? I hope that in answering this, we can put some research into the question of how to grow and spread awareness of the importance of socialization between parents and kids. If our respondents are satisfied with the activities presented and the program, then our program will achieve its goal. This research project has already been started and the data shows that our program is growing. We still need to find the right activities for families to do that more people will collectively like and want more of.
Data and Methodology
Instrument
A survey questionnaire was created by the 50 members of the Social Research and Program Evaluation class at Longwood University. The survey asked both open and close 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 Tailor Center families. Items that were included also addressed demographic information, enjoyment of the activities, family involvement, and completion of activities. Hard copies of the questionnaire were delivered to Head Start and Andy Tailor Center.
Sample
The non-probability sample for this study was based on 100 children (ages 3-5). 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 their children to attend. Attached to the questionnaire was a children’s book to incentivize the 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 20.1% response rate.
Quantitative Analysis
Quantitative analysis of the returned surveys was based on the close-ended questions. For this study, the dependent variable is family involvement. The item from the questionnaire to operationalize this was how involved was your family throughout the activity? The answer choices for this item were a scale from zero to ten, zero being not at all and ten being a great amount. For this study, the independent variable was socioeconomic status. The Item from the questionnaire to operationalize this item was what is your annual household income? There were seven different answer choices that were as follows: 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
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, “what affect does socioeconomic class have on family fun time activities and parent involvement?”, inductive open coding was used to determine reoccurring themes in the respondents’ responses.
Qualitative findings
Upon analyzing the 16-family fun time survey responses, three themes can be found: fun activities for the family, possible changes to the activities, and if the children learned anything. Data specific to the cupcake flower activity was also found and will be included in this analysis.
The first theme, fun activities for the family, can be shown through the first open ended question of the survey which was, “what did your family enjoy most about the activities?”. The first respondent answered, “A fun convenient activity to do as a family.” The idea of spending time together can be shown throughout the rest of the surveys. For example, respondent four said, “Time spent together, the talks, the learning,” when responding to the question. Respondent 15 also said, “Spending time together doing something educational is always fun.” These three quotes adequately express the theme of fun activities for the family.
The second theme, changes that could be made to the activities, can be backed up by respondents’ answers that actually show that people do not want these activities to change at all. Respondent seven simply chose to put “none” as his or her answer. Respondents 9 and 10 both said “I don’t have any.” Respondent 11 answered by saying, “none, well planned out.” Even though we have a low response rate and a few people did have a couple comments other than nothing, most of the respondents we have surveys from said they would not change a thing or left this question blank.
The third theme, learning outcomes of the children, can be seen through the responses to the question “what did your child learn from these activities?”. Overall, the children seemed to learn something from the activities. Respondent one said “Practiced cutting with scissors, listening to and following instructions, practiced counting.” This shows that their child practiced skills already known and maybe learned something from that practice too. Respondent two said “[name of child] learn how to cut and glue and how to trace better.” Respondent four said, “Helped with mood, to be patient.” Then, respondent five said, “Colors; shapes; creativity in a fun way; numbers.” All of these answers show that the kids did learn something from the activities.
A few of the respondents chose to write about the cupcake flower activity specifically in their answers. Respondent one said “practiced cutting with scissors” when asked about hat their child learned from the activities. This means that this activity had an impact on the child and his or her parent saw that. Respondent six said “She loved cutting and gluing; she loved matching stuff and jumping with everyone” when asked about what their family enjoyed the most. The part of this quote that specifically mentions the cutting and gluing refers to the cupcake flower activity. This shows that this family enjoyed the activity. Respondent 12 said “Shapes, finger toys, coloring, colors” when asked about the enjoyment of the activities. The cupcake flower activity involved cutting out shapes, so my interpretation of this answer is that the family enjoyed the cupcake flower activity.
Quantitative Findings
Figure 1
Socioeconomic Status of the Respondents
The dependent variable for this project was the amount of family involvement throughout the activities. This variable was coded through a scale of 1 to 10. The mean of our sample is 8.5. The standard deviation of our sample is 2.14. The independent variable was socioeconomic status. The variable was coded through ranges of income. There were four respondents who answered “less than $10,000.” There were two respondents who answered “$10,000-$30,999.” There were two respondents who answered “$31,000-$50,999.” There was one respondent who answered “$71,000-90,999.” There was one respondent who answered “$91,000 or more.” And finally, there were two respondents who answered with “[P]refer not to answer.”
The mean involvement for people who made less than $10,000 is 8.67. The mean involvement for people who made $10,000-$30,999 is 7.00. The mean involvement for people who made $31,000-$50,000 is 10.00. The mean involvement for people who made $71,000-$90,000 is 10.00. The mean involvement for people who made $91,000 or more is 7.00. The mean involvement for people who chose the “[P]refer not to answer” option is 6.50.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I have reviewed seven studies on how parental involvement affect a child’s academic performance. These studies had their deficiencies which were reviewed earlier. However, our study had some deficiencies too. In my opinion, the biggest problem our study had was the time constraint. We only had one semester to do this, which did not allow us to measure the effect on the children’s academics and only allowed us to measure the limited responses to the seven activities that the participants did. Also, due to the time constraint, I believe some of this project may have been rushed at certain times. Another deficiency was how we only got 16 of the 99 possible surveys back from the participants. The qualitative section of this study found positive remarks regarding the cupcake flower activity. The three themes that were measured here were fun activities for the family, changes that could be made to the activities, and learning outcomes of the children. The surveys showed that the families had a positive experience with all three of those themes and would not change a thing about this activity. The quantitative section of this study found that, on a scale of 1-10, the mean of family involvement was 8.5 and the standard deviation was 2.14. This study, as a whole, shows that family involvement can be improved among families of low S.E.S. However, more research would be needed to determine if this increased level of family involvement leads to an increase of the academic achievement of the children.
References
Ansari, A., & Gershoff, E. (2015). Parent involvement in head start and children’s development: Indirect effects through parenting. Journal of Marriage and Family, 78(2), 562–579. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12266
Coba-Rodriguez, S., Cambray-Engstrom, E., & Jarrett, R. L. (2020). The home-based involvement experiences of low-income Latino families with preschoolers transitioning to kindergarten: Qualitative findings. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 29(10), 2678–2696. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-020-01781-7
Day, E., & Dotterer, A. M. (2018). Parental involvement and adolescent academic outcomes: Exploring differences in beneficial strategies across racial/ethnic groups. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 47(6), 1332–1349. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-018-0853-2
Gordon, M., & Cui, M. (2014). School-Related Parental Involvement and Adolescent Academic Achievement: The Role of Community Poverty. Family Relations, 63(5), 616–626. https://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12090
Goshin, M., Dubrov, D., Kosaretsky, S., & Grigoryev, D. (2021). The Strategies of Parental Involvement in Adolescents’ Education and Extracurricular Activities. Journal of Youth & Adolescence, 50(5), 906–920. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-021-01399-y
Perriel, Y. (2015). Parental Involvement and Academic Achievements: A Case Study. Social & Economic Studies, 64(1), 75–88.
Shanti, C. (2017). Engaging Parents in Early Head Start Home-Based Programs: How Do Home Visitors Do This? Journal of Evidence-Informed Social Work, 14(5), 311–328. https://doi.org/10.1080/23761407.2017.1302858