Predicting Home Involvement: Moving beyond Broad Pan Ethnic Categorizations

• In Event: 534 - Section on Children and Youth Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. Family and the Home Environment

Abstract

Parental involvement has been found to be a significant predictor of a number of childhood outcomes. Yet there are gaps in the literature that contribute to our understanding of what predicts the likelihood of parents being involved in their children’s schooling, specifically home involvement. Using data from Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999 (ECLS-K) we examine the impact of parental, education, employment and income on both verbal and nonverbal home involvement. Our study fills gaps in the literature by moving beyond the Black/white gap to account for specific racial/ethnic groups and nativity status. We find that the impact of parent’s education, employment and income not only varies by the type of involvement (verbal vs. noverbal) but also across our 12 racial/ethnic and nativity groups. Our findings suggest that broad pan ethnic categorizations are not sufficient, for example Filipino and Chinese immigrants have very different levels of home involvement compared to their non-Hispanic white peers. These difference would be missed if we group them into a generic Asian category. The importance of this issue is discussed further.

Authors

• Littisha Antoinette Bates, University of Cincinnati

• Bridgette Peteet, University of Cincinnati