Preschoolers living in poverty are at risk for several negative school outcomes. Parent involvement in the home and school environment is one way to potentially help mitigate these risks. However, parents in poverty tend to experience barriers that may prevent their involvement. When a preschooler has a disability, their parents can play a potentially even more crucial role, though these parents also face more potential barriers. Hoover-Dempsey and colleagues offer a model of psychological and contextual variables that may help explain what motivates a parent to become involved (Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler, 1995, 1997; Walker, Wilkins, Dallaire, Sandler & Hoover-Dempsey, 2005). This model has yet to be adequately studied with parents of preschoolers with and without disabilities living in poverty. The present study collected parent survey data from two local consortiums of Head Start preschools. Head Start preschools serve families living in poverty. A measure by Walker and (2005) was designed to capture the psychological and contextual variables from the Hoover-Dempsey model and this measure was adapted for use with preschool populations. The adaptation first involved multiple focus groups to identify a set of items that had reasonable content validity. Then, the surveys were distributed via children’s Friday folders at all of the Head Starts in the consortium. Data was collected at an additional consortium to supplement sample size. The results were first analyzed for construct validity through a series of factor analyses. The resulting measurement model contained fourteen predictor variables and three outcome variables. This factor structure underwent multigroup structural equation modeling to estimate the relationships between predictor variables (i.e. psychological and contextual variables) and outcome variables (i.e. home, school, and home-school conferencing). The results revealed several significant relationships between the psychological and contextual predictors and the outcome variables, as well as group differences between parents of children receiving special education and parents of children who do not receive special education. Implications and limitations are discussed.
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