A multidimensional examination of Chinese family involvement in early childhood education: Validation of the Chinese version of the Family Involvement Questionnaire

ABSTRACT

This study preliminarily examined the multiple dimensions of Chinese family involvement in early childhood education across demographic variables through a pilot translation and validation of a revised 36-item measure of the Family Involvement Questionnaire (FIQ; Fantuzzo, J., E. Tighe, and S. Childs. 2000. “Family Involvement Questionnaire: A Multivariate Assessment of Family Participation in Early Childhood Education.” Journal of Educational Psychology 92 (2): 367–376) for use in Chinese kindergartens. Participants were 311 parents or caregivers (Mean age = 35.74) of children (Mean age = 5.53) enrolled in kindergartens in Shanghai, China. Exploratory factor analysis revealed a three-factor structure similar to the original (non-Chinese) FIQ: school-based involvement, home-based involvement, and home-school conferencing. However, 12 items were removed because they either had cross loadings or did not load onto any factors. As expected, based on prior research with the original FIQ, differences in the Chinese Family Involvement Questionnaire (FIQ-C, hereafter) dimension scores across subgroups based on parents’ educational levels and monthly family income were found using MANOVA. Implications for future research and cross-cultural studies on family involvement are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Family involvement
• Family Involvement Questionnaire
• Chinese kindergarten children
• reliability
• validity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.