Parental Support in Language Skills Development: Scale Development and Validation

Abstract

The present study aims to develop a measurement tool that involves parental support for the language skills development process in mother tongue education or language arts classes (Turkish course in Türkiye, L1). Family is an undeniable factor in a child’s academic performance. In this context, there is no measurement tool that examines the support provided by families to their children in the field of language arts (mother tongue education). Considering that such a measurement tool would be useful for researchers and teachers, the study set out to develop it. The scale is not language specific, but in order to apply it to the Turkish parents it was created in Turkish. In order to develop the measurement tool, first, a literature review was conducted. The relationship between family and academic achievement, family social support, and parental academic support were investigated. In addition, interviews were conducted with five parents on a voluntary basis, and the actions that parents can take to support language skills were investigated. Thus, the item pool of the measurement tool was formed as 32 items. These items were prepared within the framework of the relevant literature and interviews with parents in a way to cover the following topics: parents’ guiding and activities that can support language skills, parents’ emotional support to the child, parents’ material support that can enhance language skills, parents’ support to the child in homework assignments in language arts classes (Turkish course in Türkiye). The items were presented to the inspection of two field experts and one measurement and evaluation expert. In addition, the items were presented to a field expert and two parents for the inspection of language and expression, and measures were taken to ensure that there were no incomprehensible items. After these stages, a total of 439 parents formed the participants of the study. While 204 of these participants were used for item analysis and EFA (exploratory factor analysis), 235 of them were used for CFA (confirmatory factor analysis), convergent validity and reliability analysis. Based on the findings obtained, 24-item, 4-factor “Parental Support in Language Skills Development Scale” can be considered as a valid and reliable measurement tool.