Parents’ Selection of Children’s Books

Abstract

The research was conducted to determine whether the education and income status of the parents made a difference in the selection of books. The study group of the research consisted of 151 parents who had children aged 3-6 years. These children attended independent public preschools in the city centre of Istanbul, which were selected by a random sampling method. Data were collected in two steps. First, a “General Information Form” was delivered to collect generic information on the parents. Then, Saçkesen’s (2008) “Children’s Book Selection Criteria Scale” was utilised to determine the consideration of parents for choosing a book for their children. The research is a causal-comparative study that aims to determine the causes or consequences of differences between groups. A Two-Way ANOVA was performed in the 3x3 model, as there were three categorical independent variables belonging to income level, three categorical independent variables belonging to education level, and a dependent variable in the continuous variable structure in the study. The findings indicate no significant difference between the book choice criteria of parents according to the income level when the education levels of the parents are not taken into consideration. However, when the income levels are not taken into consideration, a significant difference was found between the education level scores of parents for their book selection criteria. After a significant interaction between the income and education levels was found, simple effect analyses for the subgroups reveal significant differences between the secondary school-high school graduation levels of the parents in the low-income group and the secondary school-university graduation levels of the parents in the middle-income group. Focusing on parents with lower education and income levels can be a good starting point to increase parents' awareness of book selection.