Participation of Parents of Elementary School Students in their Children’s Academic Activities

<span>This article describes the degree of parental involvement in the educational activities of elementary school children in the State of Yucatán. Based on the opinion of experts and references in the relevant literature, a Likert-type scale with 36 items was designed and applied to 106 parents of students at a public elementary school in the city of Mérida, capital of the state of Yucatan, in order to evaluate their involvement. The results show that the scale has an acceptable reliability coefficient (Cronbach’s alpha = .92) and its underlying structure, after a factor analysis with varimax rotation, consists of three unit factors: 1) <em>Communication with the school</em>; 2) <em>Communication with the child, and</em> 3) <em>Knowledge of the school</em>. Generally, the results show that parent involvement in children’s educational activities is low or precarious, especially in regard to the factors of <em>Communication and Knowledge of the school</em>, although mothers have a considerably higher level of involvement than fathers in these factors. The implications of these findings for the school as well as for research on parental participation in the educational process are discussed in light of the results.