Environmental correlates of early language and literacy in low- to middle-income Filipino families

Abstract

Socioeconomic status (SES) is a distal factor that may be related to children’s early language and literacy skills via more proximal factors such as home literacy environment (HLE), preschool attendance, and parental self-efficacy (PSE). Previous evidence for these links mostly came from research in developed countries, and interventions in developing countries were designed with those findings in mind. Structural equation modeling was used to extend the generalizability of these relationships in a low- to middle-income, developing country sample of 3- to 5-year-old children and their families from Cebu City, Philippines (N = 673). SES was generally found to be directly associated with HLE, preschool attendance, PSE, and children’s skills. Preschool attendance was found to mediate the relationship between SES and vocabulary skills among 3- and 4-year-old children, whereas home literacy resources were associated with children’s vocabulary skills among 5-year-old children in the sample. Measurement issues and particular educational challenges faced in the Philippine context are discussed in relation to the results.