Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

5-1998

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Education

Major Professor

Donald J. Dickinson

Committee Members

C. Thomas Cruthirds, Lawrence DeRidder, R. Steve McCallum, Robert Williams.

Abstract

The primary purpose of this study was to assess the reliability and validity of the Home Environment Profile (HEP) and to determine the most effective use of items and scales in predicting school achievement. The HEP is a 69-item test that measures nine parenting styles. Most of the items used in the HEP were selected from actions that research on parent training had shown to have "treatment validity." Items reflect a learning theory paradigm. Items were grouped by judges into 9 scales: (a) Modeling Attitudes and Behavior, (b) Monitoring Social Behavior, (c) Monitoring Academic Behavior, (d) Rewarding School Work and Behavior, (e) Disciplining, (f) Problem Solving and Communicating, (g) Nurturing, (h) Self-Managing, and (i) Teaching and Motivating. Parents completed the untimed instrument using a 5-point rating scale for each item. Student grades were rated on a 4-point scale. Initially, the subjects (N= 196) in this study consisted of three groi5)s of parents: (a) parents of high-achieving students making at least 75% As and B+s (n = 127), (b) parents of low-achieving students making at least 75% Cs, Ds, and Fs (n = 69), and (c) a group of parents whose children were being served by mental health facilities for emotional and behavioral problems (n = 24). Due to insufficient sample size, the Mental Health group was combined with the high and low groups for a total sample of 196. Items of the HEP were judged by two independent raters to be in 1 of 9 parenting scales. Rater agreement was 93% across all items, with judges agreeing on the placement of 65 of 69 items. Test-retest reliability for the HEP was r = .77, with item coefficients ranging from .03 to .98 (two-week interval for a sample of 30). Scale reliability was also determined by test-retest, with correlation coefficients ranging from .44 to .93. To assess the validity of the HEP, all items were then correlated to school achievement. Forty-five items correlated (Spearman's Rho) significantly with ranks of grades. Scales formed from rater judgments were then used to determine the degree of association between scales and grades. All but one scale (Problem Solving and Communicating) were found to correlate (Spearman's Rho) at a statistically significant level with student grades. Logistic regression analyses were then performed to predict parent membership of the High Achievement (As and B+s) and Low Achievement (Cs, Ds, and Fs) groups. Of the 8 HEP scales having at least 3 items, 3 scales (Monitoring Academic Behavior, Rewarding School Work and Behavior, and Nurturing) increased the prediction rate above the base rate of 63.84%. Using only these 3 scales increased the prediction rate to 83.05%. No other scales contributed to the improvement in the prediction of group membership.

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