Examining the effects of parents’ reading comprehension questions on child outcomes in middle childhood

Description

While some evidence suggests that the frequency with which parents talk with older children about books predicts reading achievement (Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, 2011), little is known about whether the contents of these discussions explain variation in child outcomes. In this thesis, I investigated whether variation in the types of reading comprehension questions that parents asked their third and fourth graders about texts explained differences in children's reading comprehension and text retellings. In the first survey study, I explored variation in the types of reading comprehension questions that parents self-reported asking their third graders about texts that their children read independently (n = 621). Using latent profile analysis, I identified four parent profiles: moderate questioners, infrequent questioners, frequent questioners, and immediate questioners. The first three parent groups generally asked immediate questions (i.e., those to which the answer is grounded in the text) and non-immediate questions (i.e., those in response to which students need to bridge text-based information with prior knowledge) at similar rates. In contrast, immediate questioners asked many more immediate than non-immediate questions. Profile membership did not predict children's performance on a standardized measure of reading comprehension.

In the second study, I evaluated the effects of the questions that 120 parents asked their fourth graders about brief narrative and informational texts on reading comprehension and text retellings. I found several significant main effects of parent questions on children's retellings, but not on a standardized measure of reading comprehension. Moreover, findings suggest that parent questions may be particularly beneficial for less proficient readers. Compared to students reading above the sample mean on a measure of reading comprehension, students reading below the sample mean retold more of the informational text when their parents asked immediate questions and more of the narrative text when their parents asked non-immediate questions. Together, findings from the two studies suggest parents' questions explain variation in proximal child outcomes, such as their retellings about texts, but not more distal outcomes, such as standardized measures of reading comprehension. Findings have implications for schools that encourage home-based parental literacy support in the upper elementary grades.