Multiple dimensions of family engagement in early childhood education: Evidence for a short form of the Family Involvement Questionnaire

Abstract

The primary aim of this study was to develop and validate a short form of the 42-item Family Involvement Questionnaire (FIQ) for use in preschool. Empirical evidence derived from a representative sample of preschool programs in a large city in New York State with the original version of the FIQ was used to select the items for a 21-item short form. A representative sample of 590 Head Start families was also identified from a large Head Start program in Pennsylvania to serve to validate the short form. Confirmatory factor analysis of the short form substantiated the three robust dimensions of family involvement from the original FIQ. Concurrent measures of parental satisfaction and assessments of children's literacy and mathematics skills along with an examination of family demographic variables supported the validity of the confirmed dimensions. Implications for the use of this multidimensional, short form of family involvement in large-scale program evaluation were discussed.