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Chapter 2
Family Involvement in Reading and Literacy Activities
and Results for Children’s Literacy Achievement
and Social-Emotional Skills
Chapter 2 summarizes research regarding family involvement with young children in literacy
activities. The 52 studies reviewed include 24 preschool studies (46 percent), 17 kindergarten
studies (33 percent), 3 first-grade-and-beyond studies (6 percent), and 8 meta-analyses (15
percent. (See Table 1 in Chapter 1 and Appendix Table A.1 for, respectively, general characteristics
of and specific details about the studies.) Noteworthy is the fact that 8 of the 24 preschool
studies followed students beyond preschool, as did 7 of the 17 kindergarten studies. The results
of the studies were published between 2000 and 2012, and all had sample sizes of 30 or more,
ranging from 30 to 21,255. The largest percentage of studies (37 percent) include samples of
100 to 500 participants. About one-third (17) of the studies were interventions to increase
family involvement in activities linked to reading with students, and over 80 percent (44) of the
studies included longitudinal measures of students’ reading or social-emotional skills.
Researchers used various appropriate methods for their study designs, including regression
analyses or path modeling (23 studies); hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) (8
studies); and other methods, such as analysis of variance / analysis of covariance
(ANOVA/ANCOVA) (8 studies), t-tests (2 studies), correlations (2 studies), and chi-square
tests (1 study). The meta-analyses reported summary statistics and effect sizes for more than
230 studies (8 meta-analyses). The variety of designs and methods enabled us to look across
well-planned studies for consensus or confirmation of patterns of results of family involvement
activities on student literacy achievement and social-emotional outcomes. Appendix
Table A.1 summarizes each of the 52 studies of literacy-linked family involvement, presenting
information on the form of parental involvement, study citation, age of children, study
design and sample characteristics, results for children’s cognitive (reading) skills, socialemotional
skills, and other results of interest.
Across the preschool and early primary grades, most studies focused on questions
about family involvement in learning activities at home (39 percent) and at school (29
percent). Another focus was on supportive parenting activities, in general (22 percent),
followed by a subset of studies using general or composite measures of family involvement
both at home and at school (9 percent). Most studies reported results for more than one
literacy and/or behavior outcome.
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