Parental Involvement in Education: A Multidimensional Assessment for Adolescence

Parental involvement in education during adolescence takes on different conceptualizations and strategies, compared to younger ages, to match youths’ developmental needs (i.e., Academic Socialization). Academic Socialization entails understanding the value of education, fostering educational and occupational plans, linking schoolwork to interests and goals, and discussing learning strategies, generating an understanding between parents and youth about the larger purpose of schoolwork. Although the concept of Academic Socialization is related to a range of academic, mental health, and postsecondary outcomes, its measurement across studies has varied widely in scope and psychometric rigor. Based on grounded analyses of focus groups with ethnically diverse adolescents, their parents and teachers, along with a panel of expert raters, we conducted a quantitative development and initial validation study (N =386 parents, 31.9% African American; 31.1% Euro-American; & 31.3% Latinx) to test the psychometric properties of a new assessment of parental involvement in education for adolescence. Confirmatory factor analyses were used to test and then replicate the psychometric properties of the assessment. The resultant 34-item, 6-dimension assessment showed strong reliability, along with configural, metric, and scalar invariance across gender and configural and metric invariance across ethnicity.