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The Unique Contribution ofHome Literacy Environment toDifferences in Early Literacy SkillsElizabeth A. Griffin a & Frederick J. Morrison aa Department of Psychology , Loyola University of Chicago ,6525 N Sheridan Road, Chicago, Illinois 60626, USAPublished online: 30 Jul 2010.

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The Unique Contribution of Home LiteracyEnvironment to Differences inEarly Literacy Skills†

ELIZABETH A. GRIFFIN and FREDERICK J. MORRISON*

Department of Psychology, Loyola University of Chicago,6525 N Sheridan Road, Chicago, Illinois 60626, USA

(Received 5 October 1996)

The psychometric utility of a home literacy environment measure is evaluated and itsunique contribution to predicting literacy skills is examined. The scale is derived frominformation provided by parents of kindergarten children about the amount of readingmaterials in the home, and the frequency of library visits, adult literacy-related behaviors,adult-child reading, and television viewing. Measures of language, reading, generalknowledge and math were collected from 295 children in fall of kindergarten and springof second grade. The home literacy environment scale predicts unique variance inkindergarten and second grade language-based, but not number-based, literacy skills.Hence, the simple and easily administered measure of the home literacy environmentproves to be psychometrically strong and uniquely predictive of differences in earlyliteracy skills.

Considerable evidence shows that large numbers of American students have inad-equate literacy and numeracy skills. National assessments of American school-agedchildren reveal that literacy skills are below what is necessary for success in school(Applebee, Langer & Mullins, 1989). Further, cross-cultural studies demonstratethat children schooled in Asian countries outperform their American counterpartsin mathematics achievement, problem-solving skills and reading (Stevenson & Lee,1990; Stevenson, Chen & Lee, 1993).

Achievement differences are apparent as soon as children begin formal schooling.American children start school witii vastly different literacy and numeracy skills(e.g., Alexander & Entwisle, 1988; Morrison, Griffith, Williamson & Hardway, 1995).Although some of the differences can be attributed to more traditional indices, such

†This research was supported by a grant from National Institute of Child Health and Human ,Development (HD27176).

* Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Frederick J. Morrison, Departmentof Psychology, Loyola University of Chicago, 6525 N Sheridan Road, Chicago, Illinois 60626. Electronicmail may be sent to fmorris@orion.it.luc.edu.

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234 E.A. GRIFFIN and F.J. MORRISON

as IQ, increasing evidence suggests that what children experience before they beginformal schooling affects where they lie on the broad continuum of school readiness(Hart & Risley, 1995). Experiences that children have at home or at preschool, forexample, should be considered as sources of potential influence.

Recent attention has focused on an aspect of the home context as a potentialsource of influence on children's entering skills: the home literacy environment.While the claim that the home literacy environment might influence a child'sliteracy development is not new (Teale, 1986), a number of fundamental questionsremain unanswered. In particular, techniques and instruments to measure thenature and influence of the home literacy environment are still in a preliminarystage. The "home literacy environment" has been denned predominantly by asingle feature, the frequency of parent-preschooler reading (Bus, van ljzendoorn &Pellegrini, 1995). But questions have been raised about the adequacy and power ofreading frequency as a predictor of subsequent literacy attainment (Scarborough &Dobrich, 1994). Others have considered a multifaceted definition of home literacy,including measures of the duration of shared picture book reading, number ofpicture books, and frequency of child's requests for picture book reading activity(Payne, Whitehurst & Angell, 1994; Scarborough, Dobrich & Hager, 1991). Forexample, Payne and his colleagues (1994) examined the influence of home literacyon the development of language skills in an economically homogeneous sample.They found that the home literacy environment captured between 12% and 18.5%unique variance in language skills after taking out the effects of parent IQ andparent education. These results must be viewed with caution, however, becauseother important sources of influence highly correlated with child achievement werenot included in the model. In addition, other potentially important aspects of thehome literacy environment, such as television viewing, were not considered in theirmeasure. Our measure of home literacy was similar to that used by Payne andhis colleagues. We included questions about what we considered to be important,minimal defining features of the home literacy environment that are easily assessedthrough a self-report questionnaire: the presence/absence of reading materialsin the home (newspapers, child and adult magazines, and children's books), thefrequency of library visits; the frequency of observable literacy-related behaviors(mother and father read to themselves), the frequency with which an adult readsto the child, and the frequency of one literacy-competitive behavior (televisionviewing). Other aspects of the home literacy environment shown to predict literacyskills were not included in our measure. For example, De Temple (1994) foundthat the amount of non-immediate talk by mothers to their preschool children isassociated with later language skills. However, it is difficult to reliably measure theamount of non-immediate talk using a questionnaire. Moreover, we believed thatsuch an index would be highly correlated with those aspects of the home literacyenvironment tfiat we do assess.

The present study addresses two major issues concerning home literacy. First,we examine how well our measure of the home literacy environment predictsunique variance in children's performance on academic achievement measures afteraccounting for other important sources of variance, such as child IQand maternal

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CONTRIBUTION OF HOME LITERACY ENVIRONMENT 235

education. We expect our index to capture unique variance in performance onliteracy-based tasks but not numeracy-based tasks. Second, we want to validate theeffectiveness of our succinct measure of the home literacy environment in predictingliteracy-based achievement differences among children.

METHOD

Subjects

A total of two-hundred and ninety-five elementary school students in Greensboro,North Carolina, a large southeastern city, were followed from the fall of kinder-garten through the spring of 2nd grade.0 The students represented 55 separatekindergarten classrooms within 16 elementary schools. There were roughly equalnumbers of females (n = 145,49%) and males. Whites (n= 180, 61%) outnumberedAfrican-Americans (n = 113, 38%) and "Others" (n = 2, 1%). At the point of initialtesting, students ranged in age from 4 years 10 months to 5 years 10 months, withthe average age being 5 years 5 months.

Procedure

Children's literacy and numeracy skills were assessed in the fall of kindergarten, andeach subsequent spring from kindergarten through second grade, using the PeabodyPicture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-R, Form L; Dunn & Dunn, 1981) and three subtestsof the Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT-R, Form-L; Markwardt, 1989).The PPVT was used to measure receptive vocabulary and the PIAT-R was used tomeasure general knowledge, reading recognition, and mathematics skills. Childrenwere also administered an abbreviated battery of the Stanford-Binet IntelligenceScale (Thorndike, Hagen & Sattler, 1986) in the middle of their kindergarten year.Table 1 provides means and standard deviations for these measures.

A two-page background questionnaire designed to obtain information onmaternal and paternal education and occupation, family composition and structure,child's health, child's preschool experience, and the home literacy environmentwas completed by parents during late fall of the child's kindergarten year (seeTable 1). An index of the quality of the home literacy environment was created

"These data were collected as part of the Greensboro Early Schooling Study, initiated in the fall of1990. Three consecutive cohorts of entering kindergarten children participated in the study using anactive parental-consent procedure, and continued only with annually renewed consent. The originalthree-cohort sample was considerably larger, n = 663. Attrition from the study was due to many factorstypical of longitudinal research: failed to renew active consent during first or second grade (n = 244); heldout of kindergarten, so effectively one year older than average, (n = 71); retained (n = 52) or promotedearly (n=l). A comparison of participants with complete data across the three years with those whodropped out of the study revealed that the final sample is similar to the original sample with respect togender, but different with respect to race, maternal education and IQ. The group of children who leftthe study had more African-American children, and maternal education and IQ were lower. In effect, ourfinal sample has less variance than the original, so any conclusions we draw will be conservative estimatesfor the population.

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236 E.A. GRIFFIN and F.J. MORRISON

Table 1 Descriptive statistics for predictor and outcomevariables.

Predictors

Child IQMaternal education (# years)Entrance age (# months)Preschool (# months)Home literacy environment

Outcomes

Pretest

Receptive VocabularyGeneral KnowledgeReadingMathematics

Post-test

Receptive VocabularyGeneral KnowledgeReadingMathematics

Mean

100.4414.0564.7923.829.33

59.8815.549.17

12.84

93.6940.3547.1437.94

Std. Dev.

15.332.494.18

18.023.19

18.669.356.275.69

14.8815.9714.7913.03

by first assigning from 0 to 2 points, with 2 indicating a more positive homeliteracy environment, to each of 9 literacy-related items: number of child and adultmagazine subscriptions in the household; number of newspaper subscriptions in thehousehold; hours of television watched per week by the child; how often a librarycard was used by a member of the household*; how often someone read to the child;the number of books the child owned; and how often the modier and father readto themselves. Next, the assigned points were summed to create a single index, the"home literacy environment." Inter-item reliability for the measure was determinedto be satisfactory (Cronbach's a = .74). Appendix A presents in greater detail theitems and scoring scheme for the composite index.

RESULTS

A three-step analytic strategy was adopted in order to determine the uniquecontribution of the home literacy environment to differences in literacy skills.First, correlations were computed to determine the relations between theoreticallyrelevant predictor variables (specifically, number of months of preschool, ageupon entry into school, maternal education, and IQ) and fall kindergarten andspring 2nd grade outcome variables, expressed as raw scores (PPVT-R and PIAT-R).

This item ranged from 0 to 1 points.

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CONTRIBUTION OF HOME LITERACY ENVIRONMENT 237

Table 2 Intercorrelations among select predictor and outcome variables.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Predictors

1. Child IQ

2. Maternal education 0.41**

3. Entrance age 0.09 0.14

4. Home literacy environment 0 .53" 0.54** 0.17*

5. Preschool 0.13 0.37** 0.10 0.17*

Outcomes

Pretest

6. Receptive Vocabulary 0.63** 0.46** 0.37** 0.63** 0.16'

7. General Knowledge 0.60** 0.45" 0.35** 0.54" 0.14 0 .79"

8. Reading 0.47** 0.35" 0.32" 0.42** 0.18* 0.54" 0.55**

9. Mathematics 0.58** 0.30** 0.37** 0.43** 0.18* 0.59" 0.60** 0.58**

Post-test

# Receptive Vocabulary 0.60** 0.42" 0.21** 0.55" 0.08 0.74" 0.74" 0.54** 0.64**

# General Knowledge 0.58** 0.47" 0.24" 0.56" 0.09 0.67** 0 .73" 0.51** 0 .58" 0.73**

# Reading 0.52** 0.40** 0.17* 0.49** 0.15* 0.47** 0.49** 0.52** 0.46" 0.55** 0.59**

# Mathematics 0.62** 0.41** 0.29" 0.48" 0.17* 0.50" 0.52" 0.52" 0 .63" 0.60** 0.63** 0 .61"

*/><.01, **/><.001

Table 2 presents these intercorrelations. For race and gender, analyses of variancewere conducted to evaluate group differences for each outcome variable. Second,step-wise regressions were conducted to determine which of the statistically ortheoretically related variables captured unique variance in each outcome. Finally,forced-entry regressions were run to determine the contribution made by homeliteracy environment after the effects of statistically or theoretically related predictorswere removed. This same strategy was used for fall kindergarten and spring secondgrade test scores.

Fall Kindergarten

Receptive vocabulary

We evaluated a seven-variable model for predicting performance on the receptivevocabulary test (PPVT-R) in the fall of kindergarten. Child IQ, maternal education,entrance age, preschool experience, race and gender were entered as a block in thefirst step of the forced-entry regression analysis, and home literacy environment wasentered in the second. Table 3 presents the coefficients for this model. Examinationof the standardized coefficients reveals that the home literacy environment was apowerful and significant predictor of children's receptive vocabulary skills (.R2 = .029,jfr=.OOO). In fact, it is as powerful as both entrance age and race; only IQ was astronger predictor. Specifically, children with higher scores on our index of homeliteracy demonstrated better receptive vocabulary skills at school entry than childrenwith lower scores.

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238 E.A. GRIFFIN and F.J. MORRISON

Table 3 Predictor variable coefficients for kindergarten outcomes.

Outcomes

Receptive GeneralPredictors Vocabulary Knowledge Reading Mathematics

IQ .403** .219** .139** .172**(.331) (.359) (.339) (.462)

Maternal education .672 .555* .201 -.076(.090) (.148) (.080) (-.033)

Entrance age 1.091** .547'* .370** .405**(.244) (.245) (.247) (.297)

Preschool experience -.022 -.019 .023 .022(-.021) (-.036) (.065) (.069)

Race -8.027** -2.439+ .463 -.679(-.210) (-.127) (.036) (-.058)

Gender 1.260 -.681 -1.15 -.073(.034) (-.036) (-.092) (-.006)

Home literacy environment 1.415** .458* .303+ .194(.242) (.156) (.154) (.108)

Constant -70.911 -52.237 -34.536 -31.577R squared .787 .516 .342 .453

Note: Standardized beta coefficients are shown in parentheses. +p< -05, *p< .01, **/>< .001.

General knowledge

The same seven-variable model was evaluated for predicting performance on thegeneral knowledge test (PIAT-R) in the fall of kindergarten (see Table 3). Findingshere revealed that home literacy environment, though not as powerful as IQ orentrance age, did predict unique variance after taking into account other associatedpredictors (if2 =.012, jfr=.OO9). In fact, home literacy environment emerged asa stronger predictor of general knowledge performance than either maternaleducation or race.

Reading recognition

We evaluated our model for predicting performance on the reading recognition test(PIAT-R) in the fall of kindergarten (see Table 3). Although not as powerful as forreceptive vocabulary and general knowledge skills, the home literacy environmentpredicts unique variance in children's reading recognition skills (i?2 = .012, p= .027).

Mathematics

Finally, our model was evaluated for predicting performance on the mathematicstest (PIAT-R) in the fall of kindergarten. As is shown in Table 3, as predicted thehome literacy environment did not account for any unique variance in children'smathematics skills after removing the effects of more traditional indices (ii? = 006,jfo=.O86).

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CONTRIBUTION OF HOME LITERACY ENVIRONMENT 239

Table 4 Predictor variable coefficients for second grade outcomes.

Predictors

Pretest score

IQ

Maternal education

Entrance age

Preschool experience

Race

Gender

Home literacy environment

ConstantR squared

ReceptiveVocabulary

.423(.530).135*(.139).433

(.072)-.165

(-.046)-.069+(-.083)-4.973*(-.163)1.438(.048).182

(.039)

60.546.610

Outcomes

GeneralKnowledge

.891**(.521).173**(.166).714

(.111).038

(.010)-.069

(-.078).281

(.009)4.318"(.135).785*(.157)

-11.315.615

Reading

.679**(.288).197**(.204).602

(.101).009

(.002)-.010

(-.012)-2.443(-.081)-1.815(-.061).739+(.159)

7.364.416

Mathematics

.734"(.321).263

(.310).547+(.104).313

(.100)-.003

(-.004)-2.313(-.087)2.130+(.082).242

(.059)

-28.295.538

Note: Standardized beta coefficients are shown in parentheses. +p< .05, *p< .01, **p< .001.

In summary, our measure of the home literacy environment captured a significantamount of unique variance in children's entering receptive vocabulary, generalknowledge, and reading recognition skills, but not entering mathematics skills.

Spring Second Grade

Receptive vocabulary

Our model for predicting performance on the receptive vocabulary test in the springof 2nd grade included the pretest score, IQ, maternal education, entrance age,preschool experience, race and gender, which were entered as a block in the firststep of a regression analysis, and home literacy environment, which was entered inthe second step. Table 4 presents the results of this analysis.

After accounting for variance due to traditional theoretically relevant predictors,the home literacy environment did not contribute additional unique variance toperformance on receptive vocabulary (i?2 = .001, p= .480).

General knowledge

We evaluated our eight-variable model for predicting general knowledge in thespring of 2nd grade (see Table 4). After accounting for variance due to otherimportant sources, the home literacy environment captured unique variance in

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240 E.A. GRIFFIN and F.J. MORRISON

post-test general knowledge scores ( ^ = .012, />=.004). Not only was it almost aspowerful as IQ, but the magnitude of predictive power observed for the pretest wasmaintained for the post-test.

Reading recognition

We evaluated our model for predicting performance on the post-test readingrecognition score and found that the effects of the home literacy environment onchildren's reading skills in the spring of 2nd grade persisted (i?2 = .012, p= .016) withthe same magnitude as what we observed for die pretest (see Table 4).

Mathematics

Finally, we evaluated our model for predicting spring 2nd grade mathematicsperformance, and the same outcome as for the pretest was achieved: knowledgeof the home literacy environment does not better our prediction of mathematicsskills ( ^ = .002,^= .311).

In summary, the home literacy measure continues to capture unique variance forperformance on tests of general knowledge and reading recognition at the end ofsecond grade, and continues not to capture unique variance for mathematics.

DISCUSSION

This study demonstrated diat a succinct, easily administered measure of the homeliteracy environment reliably predicts unique variance in children's literacy skillsat school entry and in second grade, after removing the variability attributed toIQ and social background. Not surprisingly, our findings indicate that having ahigher home literacy environment is associated widi higher performance on tests ofreceptive vocabulary, general knowledge, and, to some extent, reading recognitionskills during kindergarten. Moreover, this effect persisted for performance on testsof general knowledge and reading recognition through the end of second grade,revealing that home literacy experiences continue to play an important role inchildren's achievement.

In contrast, our index did not predict well to children's mathematics skills. Thisfinding indicates that our measure was specific to language-based literacy, and thatnumber-based literacy, or numeracy, may be influenced by a different constellationof experiences or factors. Inclusion of questions about more mathematics-orientedactivities and materials (e.g., frequency of playing counting games, number of madiworkbooks) might yield better predictability of the influence of home environmenton children's entering math skills. In any case, tins lack of predictive power for mathprovides evidence for the discriminative sensitivity of our measure.

The home literacy environment scale was designed to capture die most salient andrelevant features of the home environment for early literacy acquisition. Admittedly,other questions might be added in an attempt to refine our measure. For example,

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CONTRIBUTION OF HOME LITERACY ENVIRONMENT 241

questions about the frequency of immediate and non-immediate talk during reading(De Temple, 1994) or perhaps more qualitative questions about home readingactivities, like the nature of adult-child reading interactions (Teale, 1986), wouldyield somewhat greater predictability for reading recognition skills. Additionalquestions, however, increase the burden to the respondent which could diminishresponse rates. It is important, then, to make certain that additions significantlyincrease the predictive power of the index.

Although the home literacy environment likely remains relatively constant, itcould change as a child enters and progresses through school. Our measure wasgathered only during the kindergarten year, making exploration of this problemimpossible. We are, however, impressed with the robust continuing effects of thepre-school home literacy environment as late as 2 years after it was measured. In arelated study currently underway, we are collecting annual accounts of the homeliteracy environment.

Notwithstanding these caveats, the present findings reveal clearly that a straight-forward, simply administered measure of the home literacy environment uniquelypredicts literacy outcomes at school entry and at the end of second grade. Further, themeasure is discriminatively sensitive to language-based versus number-based literacyskills. Taken together, results from this study demonstrate that the home literacyenvironment has a unique impact on variations in children's literacy skills and thatthe present scale exhibits solid psychometric properties.

References

Alexander, K.L. and Entwisle, D.R. (1988). Achievement in the first 2 years of school: Patterns and

processes. Monograph of the Society for Research in Child Development, 53(2, Serial No. 218).

Applebee, A.N., Langer, J.A., and Mullins, N.S. (1989). Crossroads in American education. Princeton, NJ:

Educational Testing Service.

Bus, A.G., van Ijzendoorn, M.H. and Pellegrini, A.D. (1995). Joint book reading makes for success inlearning to read: A meta-analysis on intergenerational transmission of literacy. Review of EducationalResearch, 65(1), 1-21.

De Temple, J.M. (1994). Book reading styles of low-income mothers with preschoolers and children's later literacy

skills. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Harvard University.

Dunn, L. and Dunn, L. (1981). Peabody picture vocabulary test–revised. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance

Service.

Hart, B. and Risley, T.R. (1995). Meaningful differences in everyday experience of American children. Baltimore,

MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing.

Markwardt, E.C. (1989). Peabody individual achievement test — revised. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance

Service.

Morrison, F.J., Griffith, E.M., Williamson, G. and Hardway, C.L. (1995). The nature and sources of earlyliteracy. Paper presented at the meeting for Society for Research in Child Development, Indianapolis,

IN.

Payne, A.C., Whitehurst, G.J. and Angell, A.L. (1994). The role of home literacy environment in thedevelopment of language ability in preschool children from low-income homes. Early Childhood Research

Quarterly, 9, 427-440.

Scarborough, H.S. and Dobrich, W. (1994). On the efficacy of reading to preschoolers. DevelopmentalReview, 14, 245-302.

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Scarborough, H.S., Dobrich, W. and Hager, M. (1991). Preschool literacy experience and later readingachievement, Journal of Learning Disabilities, 24, 508-511.

Stevenson, H.W., Chen, C. and Lee, S.Y. (1993). Mathematics achievement of Chinese, Japanese, andAmerican children: Ten years later. Science, 259, 53-58.

Stevenson, H.W. and Lee, S.Y. (1990). Contexts of achievement. Monograph of the Societyfor Research in ChildDevelopment, 55(1-2, Serial No. 221).

Teale, W.H. (1986). Home background and young children's literacy development. In W. Teale andE. Sulzby (Eds.), Emergent literacy: Writingand reading (173-205). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Thorndike, R.L., Hagen, E.P. and Sattler, J.M. (1986). The Stanford-Binet intelligence scale: Fourth edition.Chicago, IL: The Riverside.

APPENDIX A

Home Literacy Environment: Items and Coding Scheme

The Home Literacy Environment score is a composite variable created by summingthe point values of 9 items. The items included in the composite are:

How many hours per day does your child watch TV? Mon-Fri__Sat Sun

(a weekly total is calculated as [5(#hrs Mon-Fri) + #hrs Sat + #hrs Sun])

0 points = hours per week spent watching TV is greater than 26 (inclusive)1 point = hours per week spent watching TV is between 15 (inclusive) and 262 points = hours per week spent watching TV is between 0 and 15

Does anyone in the home have a library card? ( ) Yes ( ) No If YES, how often is it used?

0 points = once a month or less1 point = more than once a month

Does your family subscribe to newspapers/magazines? ( ) Yes ( ) No

# Newspapers

0 points = no newspapers1 point = 1 newspaper2 points = more than 1 newspaper

# Adult magazines

0 points = no adult magazines1 point = 1 or 2 adult magazines2 points = more than 2 adult magazines

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CONTRIBUTION OF HOME LITERACY ENVIRONMENT 243

# Child magazines

0 points = no children's magazines1 point = 1 children's magazine2 points = more than 1 children's magazine

How often do you (mother) read to yourself?

( ) Daily ( ) Several times a week ( ) Weekly or less

0 points = weekly or less1 point = several times a week2 points = daily

How often do you (father) read to yourself.

( ) Daily ( ) Several times a week ( ) Weekly or less

0 points = weekly or less1 point = several times a week2 points = daily

Who reads to your child?

How often ? ( ) Daily ( ) Several times a week ( ) Weekly or less

0 points = weekly or less1 point = several times a week2 points = daily

Approximately how many books does your child own ?

( j Less than 10 ( ) 10-30 ( ) More than 30

0 points = fewer than 10 books1 point = 10 to 30 books2 points = more than 30 books

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