The relationship between family backgrounds, parent perceptions and behaviors of parent involvement

The purpose of this study was to identify how parent demographics of race, education, and income influenced parent behaviors at home and school directly and indirectly through parent perceptions. The goal of the research was to understand whether parent demographics had a relationship with parents’ perceptions of parent involvement and whether those perceptions had a significant relationship to their behaviors. This research was guided by Epstein’s framework for six types of parent involvement: (a) parenting, (b) communicating, (c) volunteering, (d) learning at home, (e) decision making, and (f) collaborating with the community. The Parent Survey on Family and Community Involvement in the Elementary and Middle Grades was the instrument used to collect data. A principal axis factor analysis was conducted on behavior and perception items of the instrument, which revealed a two-factor model for both behaviors and perceptions. Mediation was conducted using PROCESS for SPSS. This method identified the relationships between parent demographics, parent behaviors, and parent perceptions. The findings showed that a parent’s education, race, and socioeconomic status had a significant relationship with parent perceptions and behaviors of parent involvement. When using parent perceptions as a mediator to parent behaviors, only race was found to have no relationship with behaviors