Development and Validation of a Home Literacy Questionnaire to Assess Emergent Reading Skills of Pre-School Children

Poor psychometric characteristics of home literacy measures have been proposed as a probable reason for the weak relationships found between home literacy and emergent literacy. To investigate this idea further three studies were performed. The first study involved a methodological review of current home literacy studies. The purpose of this methodological review was to pinpoint specific problems that could have an effect on the validity of home literacy measures and the conclusions drawn from these measures. The review of the evolution of the home literacy definition across studies and how it was translated into the measures used to assess home literacy highlighted the fact that the overall home literacy construct was well understood but that the individual home literacy dimensions (i.e., reading environment, reading activities, reading beliefs and expectations) lacked the kind of detail needed to produce representative home literacy measures. Consequently, the second study consisted of experts in the area of home literacy assessing current home literacy definitions and providing suggestions for improving these definitions. This assessment resulted in the development of a comprehensive and well informed definition of not just home literacy but also the underlying dimensions of home literacy. The third and final study used these definitions to identify a pool of items for each dimension that were then assessed for relevancy by a subset of the home literacy experts who took part in Study 2. The end product of this third and final study, and this dissertation, is a set of questions that researchers in the area can use to draw from when developing a home literacy questionnaire for their studies.