Poster #176 - Development and Initial Validation of Chinese Preschool Readiness Checklist (CPRC)

• In Event: 3-206 - Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Section - School Readiness/Childcare

Integrative Statement

China has embarked on an ambitious plan to promote preschool (3-6 years) attendance rate from 56% in 2010 to 85% in 2020 (State Council of China, 2010). However, with a dearth of research and practical guidance on what constitute readiness for preschool in China, stakeholders are confronted with multiple challenges during children’s preschool entry at age 3, not to mention the challenges encountered by children themselves when transitioning from the caring home environment to the preschool group-learning environment (Appl, Hoffman, & Hughes, 2015). To define and evaluate children’s preschool readiness in the Chinese context, this study is dedicated to developing and validating the Chinese Preschool Readiness Checklist (CPRC).

We hypothesized that: (1) Preschool readiness will have three constructs: ready child, ready family, and ready preschool; (2) Ready child will have four domains: selfcare & emotions, cognitive & language, social learning, and classroom rules; and (3) CPRC has good reliability and validity.

This study adopted a mixed-methods approach. A qualitative study was conducted in Stage One to develop and confirm the scale items, which has sampled 11 preschool teachers, 4 principal, and 24 parents from four preschools in Shenzhen, China. A quantitative study was then conducted in Stage Two to examine the psychometric properties of the scale, which recruited 29 teachers and 288 children from another 4 preschools serving middle class families in the same city. All the participating teachers were trained and were invited to rate the children in their classes using the CPRC (see Figure 1 for study procedures).

All the interviews confirmed a three-construct preschool readiness and revealed that children’s ability to selfcare was most important for successful preschool transition due to caregivers’ over-protection at home and high child-teacher ratio (more than 10:1) at preschools. Four domains of ready child also emerged from the interview. Items central to these abilities along with other abilities suggested by literature review were drafted with a 5-point Likert type (1 = extremely untrue to 5 = extremely true).

In Stage Two, the items were pilot-studied, expert-reviewed, and validated which used EFA on MPlus 7.1. WLSMW was used for parameter estimation to account for the non-normal distribution of categorical data, oblique promax rotation was used to account for correlation among factors (Muthén & Muthén, 2012), and goodness of model fit was assessed (χ2 = 823.59, df = 321, p < 0.001, SRMR=0.051, CFI = 0.95, TLI = 0.93, RMSEA = 0.074) (Hu & Bentler, 2009). The Cronbach's alpha for the four factors of the final scale were .75, .95, .90, and .83, respectively, indicating good reliability (DeVellis, 2012). This iterative process resulted in a CPRC that supported the four-factor structure of readiness in children (see Table 1).

The results confirmed that the CPRC had fair model fit and good internal consistency. Future studies shall further validate the CPRC for exploration of children’s readiness for preschool in the Chinese context.

Authors

• Sha Xie, University of Hong Kong
  Presenting Author

• Hui Li, Macquarie University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tan Cheng Yong, University of Hong Kong
  Non-Presenting Author