Development And Psychometric Validation Of Home Environment Learning Scale For Secondary School Students

The importance of learning in an individual cannot be over emphasized. Learning has a long lasting impact on one’s life. For example the acquisition of knowledge and skills and all other things that is worthwhile, which are transmitted to a person through formal and informal education determines his or her potential in future. Basically, we understand that the home is the first school for a child where he or she is taught the basics norms and values by the parents before the child leaves for the formal education. Learning and reading begins in school but the first foundation of the child begins at home (Burtless, 1996). A home is a place where pupils live with their parents or guardian and it is the place where they are groomed. It is a place where the pupils begin to learn the norms and values of the society in which they find themselves. The family is a social unit in any society and it is the source of early stimulation and experience in children (Collins, 2007). The home influences the child at the most earliest possible time of his life at a time when his mind is most receptive. It provides the first impression which may last through the whole life of the child. The child often sees the parents, siblings and things in their immediate environment to be most significant and they are capable of promoting or diminishing him in self-worth and academic performance (Ekanem, 2004). Aspects of home learning environment can also be divided into activities that include informal or incidental learning during everyday activities and formal parental teaching or instruction (LeFevre Abstract: The home influences the child at the most earliest possible time of his life at a time when his mind is most receptive. It provides the first impression which may last through the whole life of the child. Therefore, it becomes imperative to know the students Home Education Environment Learning Scale for students. The study is on development and psychometrics validation of Home Environment Learning Scale. The instrument has 14 items. The instrument was administered to a purposive sample of 1245 students from 35 secondary schools in Bayelsa State, Nigeria. The sample was randomly split in two halves. The sample was divided into two. 573 cases representing 46% was used for exploratory factor analysis while the second sample 672 cases representing 54% was used for confirmatory factor analysis. The Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was conducted on the 14 items to explore the underlying structure of the MAI, Bartlett’s Sphericity test was used to investigate whether the intercorrelation matrix contains sufficient common variance to make the factor analysis viable. The significant χ 2 value, χ 2 (91) 3042.550,p=0.00 and the high Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin value, 0.816, support the use of EFA The results of the Exploratory Factor Analysis resulted in three factor Solution that is parental supervision, parental assistance and learning materials. To validate the structure or factors obtained from the EFA, an confirmatory factor analysis was conducted using second sample of 672. The CFA results indicates model fit of the three-factor model derived from EFA is acceptable in CFA ( χ2=2643.032; df =78; p=0.000; CFI=0.913; RMESA =0.075; SRMR = 0.056). The result of model fit were above the recommended cut of 0.90 for CFI, TLI and less than 0.08 for RMSEA and SRMR respectively. Furthermore, the study also indicates that items loading in the respective dimension were significant. Therefore, the Home Environment Learning Scale is valid and reliable.