The Effect of Family Literacy Interventions On Children’s Acquisition of Reading

From Kindergarten to Grade 3

A Meta-Analytic Review 

Conducted by Monique Sénéchal 

For the National Center for Family Literacy
Developed by:

Produced by RMC Research Corporation

Portsmouth, New Hampshire

2006

The Effect of Family Literacy Interventions 

On Children’s Acquisition of Reading

From Kindergarten to Grade 3

A Meta-Analytic Review 

Conducted by Monique Sénéchal 

For the National Center for Family Literacy
4

This publication was developed by the National Center for Family Literacy under a cooperative

agreement with the Partnership for Reading at the National Institute for Literacy. It was designed and

edited under a contract with RMC Research Corporation. The views expressed herein do not necessarily

represent the policies of the National Institute for Literacy. No official endorsement by the National

Institute for Literacy of any product, commodity, or enterprise in this publication is intended or should 

be inferred.

The National Institute for Literacy, an agency in the Federal government, is authorized to help

strengthen literacy across the lifespan. The Institute works to provide national leadership on literacy

issues, including the improvement of reading instruction for children, youth, and adults by sharing

information on scientifically based research. 

Sandra Baxter, Director

Lynn Reddy, Deputy Director

The Partnership for Reading, a project administered by the National Institute for Literacy, is 

a collaborative effort of the National Institute for Literacy, the National Institute of Child Health 

and Human Development, the U.S. Department of Education, and the U.S. Department of Health and 

Human Services to make scientifically based reading research available to educators, parents, policy

makers, and others with an interest in helping all people learn to read well.

This Partnership for Reading publication describes strategies proven to work by the most rigorous

scientific research available on the teaching of reading. The research that confirmed the effectiveness

of these strategies used systematic, empirical methods drawn from observation or experiment; involved

rigorous data analyses to test its hypotheses and justify its conclusions; produced valid data across

multiple evaluators and observations; and was accepted by a peer-reviewed journal or approved by 

a panel of independent experts. The application of these research-based strategies will increase 

the likelihood of success in reading instruction. Adherence to scientifically based research in this

publication was ensured by a review process that included representatives of each Partnership for

Reading organization and external expert reviewers. For detailed information on this review process,

contact the Partnership for Reading at the National Institute for Literacy, 1775 I Street NW, Suite 730,

Washington, DC 20006.

This report has been peer reviewed and approved by the Institute of Education Sciences at the 

U.S. Department of Education.

The author expresses her gratitude to Laura Westberg, Tim Shanahan, and Akeel Zaheer for their

invaluable support and help on this project. The report was enhanced by the thoughtful reviews

provided by Chris Schatschneider and the Institute of Education Sciences. The author extends her 

thanks as well to Jaime Palmer and Laura Young for conducting the searches and coding the studies

with great care.

The Partnership for Reading acknowledges the editorial and design support of C. Ralph Adler, 

Elizabeth Goldman, Lisa T. Noonis, and Robert Kozman of RMC Research Corporation.

For additional copies of this booklet, download PDF or HTML versions at www.nifl.gov. To order 

print copies, contact the National Institute for Literacy at ED Pubs, PO Box 1398, Jessup, Maryland

20794-1398. Call 1-800-228-8813 or email edpubs@inet.ed.gov

2006
i

Summary

Goal. Educators believe that parents can help their children learn to read. But what evidence

supports this belief? And if parent involvement does matter, what kinds of parent involvement

are most efficient? The goal of this report was to review the scientific literature on parent

involvement in the acquisition of reading from kindergarten to grade 3.

Method. In the present review, parent involvement in literacy acquisition was narrowly defined

to include parent-child activities that focus on reading. Moreover, the 14 studies that were

analyzed were those that included an intervention where researchers tested whether parent

involvement enhanced children’s literacy. Standard meta-analytic procedures were used to

analyze the study outcomes.

Findings: Overall. The combined results for the 14 intervention studies, representing 1174

families, were clear: Parent involvement has a positive impact on children’s reading acquisition.

The mean effect size for the combined studies was moderately large (effect size = .68). This

effect size corresponds to a 10-point gain on a literacy test (with a standard deviation of 15) 

for the intervention children as compared to the control children.

Findings: Intervention type. The three types of parent involvement represented in the review

differed in their effectiveness. Having parents teach specific literacy skills to their children was 

two times more effective than having parents listen to their children read and six times more

effective than encouraging parents to read to their children.

In the present review, providing supportive feedback to parents during the intervention did

not alter effectiveness. Also, the duration of the intervention did not moderate its effectiveness.

Findings: Participant characteristics. Parent involvement had a positive impact from

kindergarten to grade 3. In addition, the interventions were as effective for children experiencing

reading difficulties as they were for normally-developing children. Finally, the socioeconomic

level of the participating families did not affect the positive impact of the interventions.

Findings: Study design. Studies that included standardized tests yielded smaller effects than

other studies.

Conclusion. Parents can help their children learn to read. The effectiveness of parents’ help,

however, varies according to the type of parent-child activities. Educators, when deciding which

type of intervention to implement, will have to weigh the differences in effectiveness across the

different types of intervention against the amount of resources needed to implement the

interventions.

Monique Sénéchal is associate professor of psychology at Carleton

University in Canada (www.carleton.ca). She is also a member of the

Canadian Language and Literacy Research Network (www.cllrnet.ca).
ii
iii

Table of Contents

1 Introduction

4 Methodology 

9 Findings: Overall Effects

10 Findings: Intervention Characteristics

14 Findings: Participant Characteristics

16 Findings: Study Characteristics

19 Implications

22 Future Directions for Research

23 References

26 Appendix: Statistical Formulas

27 Study Summaries

1

Introduction

Goal

Educators believe that parents can help their children learn to read. But what is the evidence that

supports the idea that involving parents in their children’s literacy acquisition will result in better

outcomes for the children? And if parent involvement does matter, what kinds of parent-child

interactions are associated with improvements in children’s literacy acquisition? The goal of this

report was to review the scientific literature on parent involvement in the acquisition of literacy

from kindergarten to grade 3.

Context

Parents can be involved in their child’s literacy development in a variety of ways. Indeed, parent

involvement can be classified in at least three categories: school-based involvement, homeschool conferencing, and home-based involvement (Fantuzzo et al., 2000; Hill and Craft, 2003).

The first type of parental involvement is school-based involvement, which includes various

parental activities and behaviors occurring in their children’s school environment. Some

examples of school-based involvement activities include volunteering in the classroom, acting as

a chaperone for class field trips, participating in fundraising activities in the school, or planning

classroom activities with teachers.

The second type of parental involvement is home-school conferencing, which involves

communication between parents and teachers or other school staff regarding children’s academic

achievement, enjoyment of school, and rate of progress. Some examples of home-school

conferencing activities include talking to a teacher about a child’s areas of strength or weakness

in school, attending parent-teacher conferences to discuss a child’s progress and performance,

scheduling meetings with school administrators in order to solve problems or to learn more

about what is occurring in school, or talking with a child’s teachers about classroom rules and

daily class routines.

The third type of parental involvement is home-based involvement, which involves parents

actively encouraging children to engage in learning in the home setting and providing learning

opportunities for their children. Some examples of home-based involvement include reviewing a

child’s homework, spending time working with a child on number skills or reading and writing

skills, bringing home learning materials such as books or educational videos for a child, or

talking to a child about the parent’s love for learning. In the present research synthesis, we

focused on parent-child activities occurring at home that aimed at improving children’s literacy.

One of the most studied parent-child activities that is assumed to promote early literacy is

joint book reading. Indeed, the results of a meta-analytic review of 17 studies revealed an

overall positive association between parents reading to their children and children’s emergent

literacy or reading achievement (Bus, van IJzendoorn, and Pellegrini, 1995). Another review of

the research literature also revealed a positive association between joint book reading and early

literacy in some, but not all, of the 12 correlational studies examined (Scarborough and Dobrich,

1994). These two reviews, however, included mostly correlational studies, and, therefore, it is

impossible to assess whether book reading was the cause of the positive effects.
Another parent-child activity that has received attention is parents listening to their child

read. Two reviews of studies that have examined the effect of parents listening report positive

effects. One review included studies in which schools sent books home along with general

information about how to encourage children to read as well as studies in which parents were

given specific techniques on coaching their child during the reading (Toomey, 1993). In this

review, it appeared that providing parents with simple but specific techniques showed greater

benefits for children at risk of reading failure than did providing parents with general

information. Another review (Topping and Lindsay, 1992) only examined studies that used a

specific technique for listening to children read. This technique, called paired reading, is one

where the parent reads along with the child, providing corrective feedback and praise, until the

child feels sufficiently confident to read alone. In this review again, positive effects are reported.

It seems that the four reviews described in the previous paragraphs support the idea that

involving parents can enhance children’s literacy development. There seems to be evidence that

shared book reading as well as listening to children read are two parent-child activities that can

have positive effects. There may, however, be other parent-child activities that have positive

effects. For instance, direct teaching is another activity that is related to literacy acquisition

(Evans, Shaw, and Bell, 2000; Sénéchal and LeFevre, 2002). The approach taken for the research

synthesis reported here is different from the four previous reviews in a number of ways: (1) no a

priori decisions were made about the type of parent-child activities to be included in the present

review; (2) only intervention studies with control groups were included to allow us to make

stronger statements about the role of parent involvement on the acquisition of reading; and 

(3) meta-analytic procedures were used to integrate the findings across studies.

Focus

In the present review, parent involvement in literacy acquisition was narrowly defined to include

parent-child activities that focus on reading. No decisions or judgments were made ahead of time

on the type of parent intervention to be included, and, therefore, a broad search of the research

literature was conducted. Once the literature was surveyed and reviewed, the parent involvement

interventions were classified in one of three categories. The first category consisted of studies

where parents were asked to read to their child. Another category included interventions where

parents were asked to listen to their child read. The final category included those interventions 

in which parents were trained to do literacy exercises with their child. This classification of the

articles on parent involvement will be used to present the information about the studies.

In this review, reading acquisition is used as a general term that refers to the early literacy

behaviors of children in kindergarten as well as the more advanced behaviors of children in

grade 3. Therefore, reading acquisition includes early literacy behaviors such as knowledge of

letter names and letter sounds, phoneme awareness, as well as early word reading. Reading

acquisition also captures children’s word recognition and reading comprehension. Children’s

spelling skills were also of interest, but the review conducted did not yield studies that focused

on spelling skills. Although a few studies included kindergarten measures of early (or invented)

spelling, their number was too small to warrant a different outcome category. Hence, these early

spelling skills were included in the early literacy category. The definition of early literacy used 

in the present review excludes measures of child language such as vocabulary knowledge or

listening comprehension. Some researchers have argued that it is important to distinguish early

2
literacy from language development because they hold different relations to different types of

parent-child activities (for example, Sénéchal, LeFevre, Smith-Chant, and Colton, 2000), and 

it remains to be tested whether improvement in the language skills of young children will

eventually translate into improved literacy in grades 1 to 3.

The studies were selected to determine the causal role of parent actions in children’s literacy

development. The studies used in this analysis were those that included an intervention where

researchers tested whether a particular kind of involvement would produce the desired outcomes

in children. The selection of intervention studies that included control groups allowed an

assessment of the relative impact of different kinds of parent-child activities in fostering 

literacy skills.

Assessing the causal role of parent involvement would not be possible from an analysis of

studies with other research designs such as interventions without control groups, or descriptive

and correlational studies that document the relations between parent involvement and child

literacy, but do not control for alternative explanations for the findings. For instance, correlation

coefficients do not control for the possibility that the relation between the two key variables is 

due to their common relation with a third variable. Recent research shows that the relations

between the frequency and variability of book reading at home in kindergarten and reading

comprehension in grade 3 can be explained by their common association to children’s

vocabulary knowledge (see Sénéchal and LeFevre, 2002). 

When conducting research to assess the causality between a treatment and an outcome, the

designs that have the highest degree of internal and external validity are experimental designs

that include: (a) pre- and posttests; (b) randomized assignment to the treatment and control

groups; and (c) a control group that receives an alternative form of treatment. Next in line in

terms of design strength are experimental studies that have all of the above characteristics with

one exception: The control group does not receive an alternative form of treatment. Next come

studies for which participants are not assigned randomly, but are matched on key characteristics.

Study designs are called quasi-experimental when the participants are not assigned randomly 

to the treatment and control groups. Quasi-experimental designs are weaker than experimental

designs because they do not control for the possibility of a bias in participant assignment such

that participants with specific characteristics (for example, high motivation) may be assigned to

the intervention group, and that it may be those characteristics, not the treatment per se, that are

responsible for the obtained effects.

The present review included experimental as well as quasi-experimental designs because

Rosenthal (1995) argued that the exclusion of quasi-experiments is too restrictive and it is best 

to (a) include these studies and (b) test whether the overall effects that were found were due to

the presence of studies with weaker designs. Such a test was conducted in the present report.

Intervention studies without control groups were excluded from the present synthesis

because this study design fails to separate the effects of normal maturation from those affected

by the treatment or intervention. Generally, a young child will score better on most measures

when they are older than when they are younger. Because both the experimental and control

group continue to mature during the experiment, when they are compared, these gains are zeroed

out. The effects of maturation are not zeroed out in the pre-/posttest design without a control

group, and so these effects are almost always higher and are simply not comparable with the

effect sizes that are used for the analyses reported here.

3
Questions Addressed

Meta-analytic procedures provide a test of the overall effect of parent involvement on children’s

literacy as well as a test of similarity in the size of the effects across studies (that is, a test of

homogeneity). In the case when an overall effect is not based on a homogenous body of research,

then one examines variables, labeled moderators, that might explain the variability in effects

across studies.

Three categories of questions were addressed to test for potential moderators in the present

synthesis. The first category documented whether characteristics of the interventions were related

to the impact of parent involvement on children’s reading acquisition. This category included

questions such as whether different types of parent involvement have a differential effect on the

acquisition of reading and whether the format and amount of parent training was associated with

learning to read.

The second and third categories of questions examined whether there were other study

characteristics that might moderate the effect of involving parents in their child’s literacy

acquisition. These analyses are supplementary to the first set of questions and become important

when one finds considerable variability in effects across studies. The questions selected are those

typical in meta-analytic research (for example, see the meta-analysis by Bus and van IJzendoorn,

1999; Ehri, Nunes, Willows, Schuster, Yaghoub-Zadeh, and Shanahan, 2001; also see the

recommendations in Rosenthal, 1995).

The second category of questions addressed the issue of whether characteristics of the

samples were associated with the relative impact of parent involvement. In this section, questions

such as the role of the socioeconomic status of the family, as well as the grade and reading level

of the children were examined. It was of interest to document the reading level of the parents,

but none of the studies selected included measures of the reading skills of the parents.

The third category concerned questions about the design of the studies. For example, it

examined whether the use of standardized tests or the sample size moderated the effect of parent

involvement. The results of each question category will be described in a separate section.

Methodology

Finding the Studies

The database of studies included in the meta-analysis was established in three steps: (1) a search

of electronic databases; (2) a search of review articles; and (3) a search of the reference sections

of the articles selected in steps 1 and 2. The articles retained in the meta-analysis were those that

met the following five selection criteria:

• Studies published in a peer-reviewed journal.

• Studies that used an experimental or a quasi-experimental design to allow us to make

statements about causality.

4
• Studies that tested the hypothesis that parent involvement enhances the acquisition of

reading.

• Studies that included at least five participants.

• Studies that reported statistics permitting the calculation or estimation of effect sizes, or

reported effect sizes.

Step 1: Electronic searches. The first step was to search the scientific literature to find articles on

parent involvement. To do so, three sets of keywords were selected that would allow a systematic

and thorough search of two electronic databases: PsycINFO and ERIC. The first set of keywords

included 11 terms that described parent involvement, the second set included 21 terms that

described reading and spelling, and the third set included four terms that described the grade

levels of interest.

• Set 1: Parent involvement. Family environment, family influence, family literacy, home

literacy practices, home experiences, parent involvement, parent participation, parent

school relations, parent tutoring, parent curriculum, and parent-child reading.

• Set 2: Literacy. Alphabet, letter names, letter sounds, reading readiness, phoneme

awareness, phonological awareness, decoding, reading, beginning reading, reading

development, reading acquisition, word identification, word recognition, word reading,

miscues, reading ability, reading achievement, reading comprehension, spelling, learning

to spell, and invented spelling.

• Set 3: Grade level. Kindergarten, grade 1, grade 2, and grade 3.

The electronic searches were performed by linking the key words within each set with the

operator ‘or’ and linking each set with the operator ‘and.’ This search yielded 136 potential

articles on parent involvement. The abstract for each article was examined and the studies that

clearly did not meet the selection criteria were excluded. The application of these procedures

resulted in the selection of 77 articles on parent involvement.

Step 2: Review articles. The reference sections of three review articles on parent involvement

were hand-searched for studies that met the five criteria listed in the previous section and that

were not found in the electronic searches. The review articles were those of Bus, van IJzendoorn,

and Pellegrini (1995), Toomey (1993), and Topping and Lindsay (1992). The application of these

procedures resulted in the selection of 22 additional articles on parent involvement.

Step 3: Selecting articles. The 99 articles found in steps 1 and 2 were obtained from libraries

and examined to ensure that they met the five selection criteria. The application of this procedure

resulted in the exclusion of 86 articles, and, consequently, 13 articles were analyzed further. In

addition, three articles that described an intervention study without control groups were also

retained as potential sources of additional research (Fry, 1977; Lopez and Cole, 1999; Mudre 

and McCormick, 1989).

Step 4: Reference sections. The reference sections of these 16 articles were hand-searched

for additional articles that might have been missed in steps 1 and 2. The application of this

procedure resulted in the examination of one additional intervention study. This study did not

have a control group, and, consequently, was not included (Ebey, Marchand-Martella, Martella,

5
and Nelson, 1999), nor did its reference section yield any additional article on parent

involvement that met all five selection criteria.

A total of 13 articles were included in the meta-analysis. One of these articles (Leach and

Siddall, 1990) included four conditions, and, consequently, it was decided to assign the two

conditions described as the most intensive and specific as treatments and to match randomly 

with the treatments the remaining two conditions labeled controls. For the purpose of the metaanalysis, one treatment-control pair was labeled Study 1 and the other pair Study 2. Hence, the

meta-analysis was conducted on 14 studies. Short summaries for each study are presented in

tabular form at the end of this report.

The distribution of the excluded articles based on the five selection criteria is as follows:

67% of them did not meet the design criteria; 25% the specific hypothesis; 8% the relevant

statistics; and 2% the publication criterion.

Selection bias. Studies that were included were those published in peer-reviewed journals.

This selection criterion was used to assure that a panel of peers judged the study to be of

sufficient methodological rigor to warrant publication. This criterion, of course, does not

guarantee that the articles selected will be of high quality, nor does it imply that unpublished

research or research published elsewhere is of lower quality. It simply assured that a panel of

research peers had assessed the research. This criterion might, however, introduce a selection

bias because it is typically the case that only statistically significant results are published in peerreviewed journals. It was, therefore, important to verify whether the publication criterion did not

overestimate the effect of parent involvement. One way to do so is to estimate the number of

studies with null results that would be needed to bring down the combined effect found in the

present report to a probability level of .05. Hence, a fail-safe number was calculated according to

the formula presented in Mullen and Rosenthal (1985; see appendix). Given the findings of the

present synthesis, more than 500 additional studies with null results would be required to change

the overall findings. 

Furthermore, the reliance on refereed publications ensured that the studies were largely or

entirely obtainable, since it is difficult or impossible to conduct a comprehensive search of the

unpublished literature. Such studies are not equally accessible, which could introduce a source of

bias into the research and could prevent future replication.

Coding the Studies

The coding instrument included three sections that referred to the three categories of

characteristics, namely, intervention, participant, and study characteristics. The characteristics

were selected because they could be moderators of the effects found. As such, examining these

characteristics may help in understanding potential variation across the studies. Each of the three

categories of characteristics is described in turn.

Intervention characteristics. An analysis of the characteristics of the interventions can reveal

which aspects of the interventions were associated with the variation in effects across studies.

Each study was coded on the following four intervention characteristics: (1) the type of parent

involvement intervention with each specific intervention recoded into one of the following:

parents read to their child; parents listen to their child read; and parents teach specific reading

skills to their child; (2) the intensity of the parent training as indicated by the duration, in hours,

of the workshops; (3) the presence or absence of supportive feedback given to parents during the

intervention; and (4) the duration, in months, of the intervention.

6
The moderating effect of the presence or absence of materials provided by the researchers

could not be examined because materials were provided through workshops/meetings in all but

one study (Miller, Robson, and Bushell, 1986). In addition, the delivery mode of the parent

training (workshops or handouts) was not examined further because only two studies provided

handouts (Hannon, 1987; Vinograd-Bausell and Bausell, 1987).

Participant characteristics. The analysis of participant characteristics across the studies can

show how the intervention effects relate to particular kinds of participants. For example, it is

possible to determine if the impact of the interventions is different for different age groups. 

Each study was coded on the following three participant characteristics: (1) the grade level 

of the children; (2) the reading level of the children to reflect whether children were reading 

at a normal-level, at risk for reading difficulties, or having reading problems; and (3) the

socioeconomic level of the families, to reflect whether families had a low or a middle to 

high income.

Study characteristics. The analysis of study characteristics allowed us to determine whether

effects were related to quality factors or other aspects of the studies. Each intervention was

coded on the following seven characteristics of study design: (1) the assignment of participants 

to the intervention and control groups (that is, random or not random); (2) the sample size; 

(3) the type of tests used to measure reading (that is, standardized or researcher-designed tests);

(4) the timing of posttest administration (that is, were posttests administered immediately after

the intervention or not); (5) the type of outcome measure used (that is, the specific measures

were recoded into the following four sets of measures: early literacy, word reading, reading

comprehension, or a composite of the previous measures); (6) the year of publication; and 

(7) the country in which the study was conducted.

It was impossible to analyze whether parents implemented the interventions correctly

because intervention fidelity information was not reported in most studies. It was also impossible

to code whether the control groups received a related treatment (or another type of treatment, or

no treatment) because only two studies included a control group that received a related treatment

(Study 1 and 2, Leach and Siddall, 1990). Another study included a control group that received 

a related treatment as well as a no-treatment control group, but failed to provide the means 

and standard deviations for the two control groups, and therefore, it was impossible to calculate

separate effect sizes (Wilks and Clarke, 1988). The related treatments are described in the short

summaries for these three studies presented at the end of the document.

Assessing Coder Reliability

Two coders, a principal and a secondary coder, rated each study. Inter-coder reliability was 94%,

ranging from 100% agreement to 85% agreement on the 14 dimensions coded as well as the

transcription of means, standard deviations, F statistics, and p values. Of the 22 disagreements,

14 were due to factual errors and were corrected, while the remaining eight disagreements were

due to differences in interpretation and were not corrected. A third coder rated the dimensions

that produced the eight interpretation disagreements, and the final coding value determined by

two out of three coders was selected.

Using Effect Sizes as a Common Index of Intervention Efficiency Across Studies

The primary statistic used to integrate and compare the 14 studies was the effect size. In the

present report, an effect size is the standardized difference between the intervention group and the

control group (or an estimate of the difference). Hence, an effect size of 1 represents a difference

7
of 1 standard deviation between the intervention and the control groups. For instance, if a study

used a standardized test with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, then an effect size 

of 1 would represent a 15-point advantage for the intervention group over the control group.

Similarly, an effect size of 0.50 would represent a 7.5-point difference between the intervention

and the control groups, and an effect size of 0 would represent no difference between the

intervention and the control groups. In the present report, the description of effect sizes in 

terms of points gained on a test were used to gauge the magnitude of the effects.

Another description of effect sizes corresponds to the educational relevance of the effect

sizes. This second description is important because small effect sizes can still have educational

importance. For example, it may be the case that educators may want to promote the use of

techniques that have small effect sizes because these techniques require very few resources as

compared to techniques that have a greater effect size but require resources that are not available.

Meta-analytic Procedures

This section describes methodological details that will be of interest to those familiar with 

meta-analytic procedures. These methodological details are not necessary to understand the

findings sections.

The effect size index selected in the present analysis was Cohen’s d, a standardized measure

of the difference between the performance of the children in the intervention group and those in

the control group. Cohen’s d is calculated by subtracting the mean of the control group from the

mean of the intervention group, and dividing the obtained difference by the averaged standard

deviations for the intervention and control groups.

There were two studies for which Cohen’s d could not be calculated directly because the 

means and/or standard deviations for the intervention and control groups were not reported. 

For these studies, effect sizes were estimated from F statistics (Wilks and Clarke, 1988) or p

values (Searls, Lewis, and Morrow, 1982). In the Wilks and Clarke (1988) study, the F statistic

included two degrees of freedom in the denominator because there were three groups; this means

that an overall effect size could be estimated, but this would be based upon all of the differences

and not just the differences between the experimental and control condition. It was decided to

use the F statistic, nonetheless, because a close inspection of the means and the description of

the post-hoc tests revealed a clear advantage for the parent involvement group over the other two

groups—in other words almost all of the difference captured by the F statistic was due to the

treatment of interest. An additional study (Miller, Robson, and Bushell, 1986) reported a large

pretest difference between the two groups of participants, and consequently, the p values that

acknowledged this difference (that is, the F for the repeated measures analyses) were used. 

The formulas for calculating effect sizes from F or p values are given in the appendix at the 

end of the document.

Combining effect sizes within studies. Most studies in the database included multiple reading

measures. In conducting meta-analyses, however, it is advisable to have a single estimate of

effect size per study to ensure effect size independence. Producing a single estimate of effect 

size for each study was done in four steps: (1) for studies using standardized and experimenterdesigned tests, only the standardized measures were used to optimize comparisons across

studies; (2) for studies reporting composite scores as well as subtest scores for the same

standardized test, only the composite scores were used; (3) for the two studies that included

8
immediate and delayed posttests, only the measures for the immediate posttest were used to

optimize the comparisons with the 10 studies that included immediate posttests only; and 

(4) effect sizes were computed for any remaining measure and the median effect size was used as

a single estimate for each study.

Combining effect sizes across studies. Combining effect sizes across studies was conducted

using standard meta-analytic procedures (Cooper and Hedges, 1994; Hedges and Olkin, 1985;

and see the appendix). For the entire set of studies and each characteristic level, a homogeneity

statistic was computed to assess whether the variability in effect sizes within the set of studies

was greater than would be expected by chance (that is, p ≤ .05). For each characteristic, a

between-level statistic was computed to assess whether the different levels of the characteristic

were statistically significant from each other. In all cases, mean effect sizes were weighted to

acknowledge that studies with larger samples provide more reliable estimates of the population

effect size and that the use of unweighted effect sizes will introduce some bias in the statistics.

The weights used here were the inverse of the effect size variance for each study (Hedges, 1982).

A fixed-effect model was used to compute within- and between-levels statistics. This means that

significance testing is based on the total number of participants across studies, not the number of

studies (Rosenthal, 1995).

To assess whether some studies yielded effect sizes that were outliers, the distribution of

effect sizes was examined by calculating the homogeneity statistic for the entire set of studies

but removing each study one at a time (Hedges and Olkin, 1985). This procedure revealed one

potential outlier (Vinograd-Bausell and Bausell, 1987). The analyses were run with and without

this study to assess whether its presence altered the pattern of statistically significant results. In

all but two analyses, the inclusion of this study did not alter the findings, and, consequently, all

studies were included. The analyses for which the outlier affected the outcome were run without

the outlier, as described in the appropriate sections.

Findings: Overall Effects

Does Parent Involvement Influence Reading Acquisition?

Yes. Combining the results of the 14 intervention studies, representing 1174 families, shows 

that parent involvement does have a positive impact on children’s reading acquisition. The mean

weighted effect size was moderately large at 0.68 (with 95% confidence intervals from 0.56 to

0.81). This effect size corresponds to a 10-point gain on a standardized test (with a standard

deviation of 15) for the intervention children as compared to the control children. There was,

however, considerable variability in the magnitude of effect sizes across studies, ranging from a

low of 0.07 to a high of 2.02. As a consequence of the variability across studies, it is necessary to

assess whether the characteristics of the studies could account for the variability across studies.

The next three sections of the findings attempt to explain why the study results were so 

variable. To do so, the characteristics of the interventions, the participants, and designs of the 

14 studies with control groups were examined. The characteristics of each study are presented 

in Table 1 and the findings are reported in three sections. Within each section, the findings are

presented as answers to questions, with the first part of the answer describing the distribution 

9
of studies across characteristic levels, and the second part addressing whether these specific

characteristics were moderators that explained differences in the impact of the interventions. 

In addition, each section contains a summary table that presents the tests conducted to assess

whether the effect sizes were different for characteristic level.

Findings: Intervention Characteristics

The findings for the four intervention characteristics are presented as answers to questions. 

The first part of each answer is a description of the characteristic levels and the final part is the

statistical comparison in effectiveness among the different levels of the characteristic.

1. Is the Type of Parent Involvement Related to Reading Acquisition?

There were three levels of parent involvement. The first level, labeled Read to Child, included

two studies in which parents were encouraged to read to their child. Parents in one study were

instructed by researchers on appropriate reading practices such as how to read aloud effectively

to their children, how to choose appropriate books, select a quiet environment and an optimal

time of day, and how to ensure child interest in the books (Foster and Bitner, 1998).

Parents in another study were encouraged to engage in scripted parent-child interactions 

and extended book-related discussions, as well as to complete book-based activities related to

monthly themes (for example, vocabulary enrichment) with their child (Jordan, Snow, and

Porche, 2000).

In the second level, parents listened to their child read. This second category was labeled

Listen to Child Read and included five studies. In all but one study (Miller, Robson, and Bushell,

1986) in the Listen to Read category, children’s books were sent home from school. The

techniques to train parents varied. In two studies, teachers or researchers provided general

suggestions to parents for listening to their child read (Hannon, 1987; Tizard, Schofield, and

Hewison, 1982).

Parents read along with their child and provided corrective feedback in three studies. In two

of these studies, the paired reading technique was employed (Leach and Siddall, Study 1, 1990;

Miller, Robson, and Bushell, 1986). The paired reading technique involves a parent and a child

reading aloud simultaneously. The child tries to read every word, and if the child makes a

mistake he or she is given time to repeat the word correctly. During simultaneous reading, the

child knocks to signify his desire to read alone, at which time the parent stops reading aloud. If

the child makes a mistake or cannot read a word alone, the parent provides the correct word for

the child to repeat. At this time simultaneous reading recommences until the child knocks again.

Parents encouraged their child to use context cues in one study. In this study, parents were

trained to use meaning, context, and phonic cues instead of direct word prompts, to praise their

child, and to delay intervention when their child struggled while reading a word (Wilks and

Clarke, 1988).

The third level of interventions was labeled Parents Teach Child Literacy Skills and included

seven studies in which parents were trained to teach their child specific skills that are linked to

reading. For example, parents taught their child the alphabet in some studies, and parents taught

word reading in others.

10
11

Table 1. Intervention, Participant, and Study Characteristics for Each of the 14 Studies

Parent Involvement Type Intervention Participant Study

Characteristics Characteristics Characteristics

Study author(s) Training Supportive Duration Grade Reading SES Random N Test Standard Outcome Country Effect

hrs feedack (mos) level assignment time test measure size

given (d)

Parents Read to ChildFoster and Bitner (1998) - No 3 K 2 1 Yes 35 I Yes 1 USA 0.07Jordan and others (2000) 5 No 5 K 1 2 Yes 248 I Yes 1 USA 0.20Parents Listen to Child ReadHannon (1987) - Yes 36 Mixed 1 1 No 157 I Yes 3 UK 0.13Leach and Siddall, Study 1 (1990) 1.5 Yes 2.5 1 1 - Yes 20 I Yes 4 AUS 1.71*Miller and others (1986) 2 Yes 1.5 3 3 - Yes 54 I Yes 4 UK 0.42Tizard and others (1982) - Yes 24 Mixed 1 1 Yes 137 I/D Yes 3 UK 0.89*Wilks and Clarke (1988) 4 No 1 3 1 - Yes 42 D Yes 4 AUS 0.57*Parents Teach Specific Literacy SkillsFaires and others (2000) 1.5 No 1.3 1 3 1 No 8 I No 2 USA 0.73Kraft and others (2001) 2 Yes 4 K 1 2 No 43 I Yes 2 USA 0.41Leach and Siddall, Study 2 (1990) 4.5 Yes 2.5 1 1 - Yes 20 I Yes 4 AUS 1.15*Mehran and White (1988) 8 Yes 9 1 2 1 Noa 76 I/D Yes 4 USA 0.46*

Niedermeyer (1970) 1.5 Yes 3 K 1 2 No 148 D No 1 USA 1.37*Searls and others (1982) 1 No 5 1 1 - Noa 50 I Yes 4 USA 0.73*

Vinograd-Bausell and Bausell (1987) - No 0.5 1 1 - Yes 136 I No 2 USA 2.02*

Grade: K = kindergarten, Mixed = a combination of grades;Reading Level: 1 = normal, 2 = at risk, 3 = remedial;SES: 1 = Low income, 2 = Middle/high income;N = total sample size;Test time: I = immediately after the intervention, D = after a delay;

Outcome measure: 1 = early literacy, 2 = word reading, 3 = reading

comprehension, 4 = composite measure;

- A hyphen indicates missing information. a Participants were matched

* p ≤ .05 one tailed
Parents were given specific exercises to do with their child in four studies. Parents were

trained to use word cards in order to help their child learn to read new words and sentences

containing these words (Vinograd-Bausell and Bausell, 1987). Parents learned to select suitable

reading environments, to correct their child’s errors, and to teach letter-sound correspondence

and letter-sound blending (Kraft, Findlay, Major, Gilberts, and Hofmeister, 2001).

Parents provided their child with practice exercises to learn to read one-syllable words, 

to recognize and say beginning consonant and ending vowel-consonant sounds, and to blend

beginning and ending sounds to sound out new words (Niedermeyer, 1970). Parents engaged 

in daily activities with their child involving phonics rules, basal readers, sight words, letter-sound

correspondence, and recommended children’s books. These activities were designed to reinforce

reading skills taught to children at school (Searls, Lewis, and Morrow, 1982).

In the other three studies, parents were given a structured program that included exercises 

as well as books or texts. The difficulty level of the texts was controlled and the texts promoted, 

in some cases, specific letter-sound knowledge and/or the reading of specific words.

In one study, parents were trained to implement the Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy

Lessons program (Engelmann, Haddox, and Bruner, 1983), an empirically validated reading

program for the parents of preschool children (Leach and Siddall, Study 2, 1990). In another

study, parents were trained to use the Reading Recovery model, which included lessons

involving reading new and unfamiliar books, letter identification, decoding unfamiliar words,

writing a sentence or story, and reassembling a cut-up sentence or story (Faires, Nichols, and

Rickelman, 2000). In a final study, parents were trained using the Reading Made Easy program

(Harrison, 1981) that involved teaching sounds and letters, basic sight words, blending sounds,

and decoding words (Mehran and White, 1988).

Training parents to teach their child reading with specific exercises produced the greatest

results, with a mean weighted effect size of 1.15. This would correspond to a 17-point increase 

on a standardized measure for the intervention children as compared to the control children. The

five studies where parents were trained to listen to their child read produced a moderate effect

size (0.51) which indicates that, after the intervention, the intervention children made gains of 

8 points on a standardized measure compared to the control children. The difference between

these two types of interventions was statistically significant: Training parents to teach their child

was more effective intervention than training parents to listen to their child read.

In contrast to the above results, the two studies where parents read to their child produced 

a small effect size (0.18) that was not different from 0. That latter finding is important because it

suggests that having parents read to their child may not improve early literacy skills as defined 

in the present study.

The studies within each of the three intervention categories showed considerable variability.

In the subsequent analyses, we examined whether other intervention variables explained the

variability across studies.

2. Is the Amount of Training Parents Received Related to Intervention Outcomes?

The studies were divided into two levels. There were six studies for which the amount of parent

training lasted between one to two hours and four studies for which the training lasted between

three to eight hours.

12
In the set of 10 studies that could be included in this analysis, studies that provided less

training (two hours or less) yielded larger effect sizes than studies that provided more training

(three to eight hours). A close inspection of this finding, however, revealed that it is probably due

to the fact that four of the six less-training studies were ones where parents were trained to teach.

Hence, this finding was not interpreted further.

3. Is Providing Parents with Supportive Feedback Related to Intervention Outcomes?

In eight studies, parents were given feedback during the intervention either through home 

visits or telephone interviews. In most cases, the feedback was to help parents implement the

intervention techniques. In six studies, parents were not given such feedback. Note that most

studies did not provide enough information about the duration or type of supportive feedback

given to parents to allow further descriptions of this characteristic.

In the present set of studies, providing supportive feedback did not produce better child

outcomes than the studies that did not.

4. Is the Length of the Intervention Related to Intervention Outcomes?

Studies were classified according to three levels, namely, short, somewhat short, and long

interventions. Preliminary analyses revealed that the study by Vinograd-Bausell and Bausell

(1987) acted as an outlier, and, consequently, it was excluded in the analyses presented below.

There were three short interventions that were 1.5 months or shorter (mean length was 1.3

months, range 1.0 to 1.5 months), there were seven somewhat short interventions lasting between

2.5 to 5 months (mean = 3.6 months), and there were three long interventions that lasted 10

months or longer (mean length was 20 months, range 9 to 36 months). In the set of studies, the

intervention length did not affect study outcomes.

Summary Table of Statistical Results

Table 2 summarizes the statistical analyses that were conducted for this section on intervention

characteristics. It presents: (a) the number studies and of participating families for each

characteristic level; (b) the results of a test to assess whether the studies included in each level

produced homogeneous effect sizes; (c) the mean effect size (that is, d) for each level; (d) the

confidence interval (for p = .05) for each effect size; and (e) the results of between-levels

comparisons.

Examination of the confidence intervals is very useful for three reasons. First, confidence

intervals provide a gauge with which the variability across studies can be appreciated. Hence,

wide confidence intervals reflect that the studies included are more variable as compared to

narrower confidence intervals. Second, confidence intervals that include zero are not statistically

significant. And third, comparisons of the confidence intervals across levels allow one to assess

whether the different levels are statistically different from each other. That is, levels whose

confidence intervals do not overlap are statistically significantly different from each other.

As indicated in Table 2, the attempts to explain the variability across studies by grouping the

studies that shared common intervention characteristics did not result in more homogeneous

effect sizes. This indicates that the effect sizes for the studies within a set are more different from

each other than would be expected by chance (p ≤ .05). Second, this variability is also seen in

the width of the confidence intervals. This band around the mean effect size for each level of the

characteristics is much wider when the study results are more variable. Hence, caution should be

used in interpreting the results.

13
Findings: Participant Characteristics

The findings for the three participant characteristics are described below.

1. Is the Grade Level of the Participating Children Related to Intervention Outcomes?

Studies were divided into two levels: early literacy and more advanced reading. The four early

literacy studies included children in kindergarten, and the 10 more advanced reading studies

included children in grades 1 to 3. The five studies that included children from different grades

were included in the advanced reading category because they included older children. The

impact of the parent involvement interventions for the children in grades 1 to 3 was similar 

to that for the kindergarten children.

2. Is the Reading Level of the Participating Children Related to Intervention Outcomes?

Eleven studies were conducted with normally developing children, and four studies were

conducted with children who were at risk for reading difficulties or who experienced reading

difficulties. The impact of the parent involvement interventions did not differ between the studies

that included children reading at a normal level and those that included children reading below

or at risk of reading below grade level.

14

Table 2. Tests for Intervention Characteristics

Characteristic

Level (# of studies) n Within-levels Mean 95% Between-levels

homogeneity weighted confidence difference

d interval

Type of Parent Involvement

Read to child (2) 283 Yes 0.18 -0.07 to 0.44

Listen to child read (5) 410 No 0.51 0.31 to 0.71 Teach > Read

Teach child to read (7) 481 No 1.15 0.95 to 1.34 Teach > Listen

Amount of Parent Training

Short: 1-2 hours (6) 323 No 0.96 0.73 to 1.19

Long: 3-8 hours (4) 386 Yes 0.35 0.13 to 0.56 Short > Long

Supportive Feedback

Yes (8) 655 No 0.69 0.52 to 0.85

No (6) 519 No 0.68 0.49 to 0.87 No difference

Length of Interventiona

Short: < 1.5 months (3) 104 Yes 0.50 0.10 to 0.91

Somewhat shortb (7) 564 No 0.63 0.45 to 0.81

Long: > 910 months (3) 370 No 0.46 0.25 to 0.67 No difference

a The study by Vinograd-Bausell and Bausell was excluded because it was an outlier in this analysis.

b Somewhat short studies were between 2.5 and 5 months in length.
3. Is the Socioeconomic Status of the Participating Families Related to Intervention

Outcomes?

The families in five studies were low income, whereas families in three studies included a 

range from middle to high income. The remaining eight studies did not provide sufficient

information about socioeconomic status to establish the economic levels of the participating

families. Effect sizes did not differ between the families that came from middle/high- or lowincome backgrounds.

Summary Table of Statistical Results

Table 3 summarizes the statistical findings of the section on participant characteristics. As

indicated in the table, the attempts to explain the variability in study outcomes by grouping the

studies that shared common participant characteristics did not result in significant differences or

in more homogeneous effect sizes. Hence, caution should be used in interpreting the results.

15

Table 3. Tests for Participant Characteristics

Characteristic

Level (# of studies) n Within-levels Mean 95% Between-levels

homogeneity weighted confidence difference

d interval

Grade

Kindergarten (4) 474 No 0.56 0.36 to 0.76

Grades 1 to 3 (10) 700 No 0.77 0.56 to 0.97 No difference

Reading Level

Normal (10) 1001 No 0.74 0.61 to 0.88

Special (4) 173 Yes 0.38 0.08 to 0.68 No difference

SES

Low (5) 413 No 0.43 0.23 to 0.63

Middle to High (3) 439 No 0.61 0.40 to 0.81 No difference
Findings: Study Characteristics

The findings for the seven study characteristics are presented below.

1. Does the Manner of Assigning Participants to the Intervention and the Control Group

Influence the Intervention Outcome?

Eight studies used an experimental design in which the participants were randomly assigned to

the intervention and control groups. In the remaining six studies, participants were not randomly

assigned to the intervention and control groups (although participants were matched in two of

these six studies, see Table 1). It was usually the case in these studies that parents volunteered

for the intervention or that an entire classroom participated in the intervention.

It was very important to test whether the overall effects obtained were not due to the

presence of studies with a weaker experimental design. The effect sizes for studies that assigned

participants randomly did not differ from those that did not randomly assign participants to the

intervention and control groups.

2. Is the Size of the Sample Related to Intervention Outcomes?

Studies were divided into two levels of sample sizes based on whether the sample was smaller

than 50 or 50 and larger. There were six studies with smaller samples (28 participants, on

average) and eight studies with larger sample sizes (126 participants, on average). Studies that

included smaller samples did not differ from studies that included larger samples.

3. Is the Timing of the Posttest Related to Intervention Outcomes?

In the group of studies reviewed, there were 10 studies that tested the impact of the intervention

immediately after its completion. There were two studies that included an immediate and a

delayed posttest. For these two studies, one follow-up posttest was administered 10 months after

the end of the study (Mehran and White, 1988), and the other follow-up was three years after the

end of the study (see Hewison, 1988 that reports the follow-up to Tizard, Schofield, and Hewison

1982). There were two studies that assessed the intervention after a delay. The delay was 20

weeks for Wilks and Clarke (1988), and two weeks for Niedermeyer (1970). To test whether the

timing of the posttest influences the intervention outcome, the 10 studies with an immediate

posttest were contrasted to the four studies that included delayed posttests.

In the present set of studies, the mean weighted effect size for studies that tested children’s

reading performance after a delay did not differ from that of studies in which children were

tested immediately after the intervention.

4. Is the Use of Standardized Tests Related to Intervention Outcomes?

There were 11 studies for which standardized measures were used, and three studies for which

researcher-designed tests were used. Studies that included standardized measures yielded, on

average, smaller effect sizes than did studies that used researcher-designed tests. This finding can

be interpreted in two ways. On one side, the use of standardized tests typically produces smaller

effect sizes, but may allow one to generalize findings. On another side, researcher-designed tests

may be more sensitive to the changes that occur during the interventions.

16
5. Is the Type of Reading Measure Related to Intervention Outcomes?

The studies included a variety of reading measures. Preliminary analyses revealed that the

Vinograd-Bausell and Bausell (1987) study was an outlier in this analysis, and it was consequently

removed. Two of the remaining studies measured children’s early literacy exclusively, three

studies assessed word reading exclusively, two tested reading comprehension exclusively, and 

six studies included a combination of these measures.

In the present set of studies, the mean weighted effect size across the sets of studies that

included different types of measures did not differ from each other.

6. Is the Publication Year of the Study Related to Intervention Outcomes?

The studies were divided into two levels: recent and older studies. There were eight studies that

were published between 1990 and 2001 and there were six studies that were published between

1970 and 1989.

Older studies reported, on average, larger effects than did recent studies. This finding,

however, was due to the presence of the two Shared Reading studies in the more recent set, and

it was no longer significant once these two studies were removed. This suggests that year of

publication was not a moderator for the entire set of studies.

7. Is the Country in which the Study Was Conducted Related to Intervention Outcomes?

The studies were divided into two levels: those that were conducted in the United States and

those that were not. Eight studies were conducted in the US, and six others were conducted in

England, Australia, and New Zealand. There was no difference in the size of effects as a function

of where the study was conducted.

Summary Table of Statistical Results

Table 4 summarizes the statistical findings of the section on study design characteristics. As

indicated in the table, the attempts to explain the variability in study outcomes by grouping the

studies that shared common design characteristics generally did not result in more homogeneous

effect sizes. Hence, caution should be used in interpreting the results.

17
18

Table 4. Tests for Study Characteristics

Characteristic

Level (# of studies) n Within-levels Mean 95% Between-levels

homogeneity weighted confidence difference

d interval

Participant Assignment

Random (8) 692 No 0.74 0.57 to 0.90

Non-random (6) 482 No 0.61 0.43 to 0.80 No difference

Sample Size

< 50 (6) 168 Yes 0.59 0.28 to 0.91

> 50 (8) 1006 No 0.70 0.57 to 0.83 No difference

Time of test

Immediately (10) 771 No 0.56 0.40 to 0.71

Delayed (4) 356 No 0.77 0.55 to 0.99 No difference

Type of Tests

Standardized (11) 882 No 0.43 0.29 to 0.57

Not standardized (3) 292 Yes 1.61 1.35 to 1.88 Standardized < Not

Outcome measurea

Early Literacy (3) 431 No 0.46 0.26 to 0.67

Word Reading (2) 51 Yes 0.46 -0.10 to 1.01

Reading Comprehension (2) 294 Yes 0.46 0.22 to 0.69

Composite Measure (6) 262 Yes 0.65 0.39 to 0.90 No difference

Publication Year

< 1989 (8) 800 No 0.84 0.69 to 0.99

> 1990 (6) 374 Yes 0.35 0.13 to 0.57 1989 > 1990

Country

US (8) 744 No 0.78 0.62 to 0.93

Not US (6) 430 No 0.54 0.34 to 0.74 No difference

a The study by Vinograd-Bausell and Bausell (1987) was excluded because it was an outlier in this

analysis. 
19

Implications

The studies reviewed suggest that parents of children in kindergarten to grade 3 can help 

their children learn to read. Parents are most helpful when they are trained to teach specific 

skills to their child. Training parents on how to listen to their child read had a smaller effect 

on children’s reading acquisition, and training parents to read to their child did not affect 

reading acquisition.

These findings are limited in two important ways. First and foremost, a limited number of

studies were found that met the selection criteria. This lack of intervention research was most

evident when examining the effect of shared reading. This was certainly disappointing given the

widespread recommendations given to parents on how to help their children learn to read.

Because of the limited number of studies available for examination, it was not possible to

determine from the available data whether particular types of intervention approaches might be

more or less effective for children with and without identified reading problems, for children

from different SES backgrounds, or for older versus younger children.

The second limitation of the present research synthesis is that combining the studies failed to

produce homogeneous effect sizes. The attempts to explain this variability in terms of types of

interventions, participant characteristics, or differences in study designs also failed. Hence, the

findings must be interpreted with caution.

Should Educators Train Parents to Teach Their Children to Read?

Yes. The studies included in the present report suggest that training parents to teach their child

specific reading skills can have a large effect on children’s reading performance.

The global effectiveness of parent teaching has been demonstrated in the present review, but

the effectiveness of the different types of teaching interventions remains to be investigated. As

described previously, the interventions differed in the nature of the instructional program as well

as the skills that were taught.

Educators will want to know what is the most effective way to train parents to teach their

children reading skills. From the present review, it is unclear whether it is training parents to do

focused exercises with their children or incorporating these exercises into a more global program

of instruction that is more effective. It is also unclear whether it is best to design interventions

that match closely the school curriculum, and what is the optimal proportion of new and familiar

material to be included in the exercises. Answers to these questions await future research. In the

meantime, educators could use some of the already existing programs and adapt them to their

specific needs.

Educators will also want to know what aspects of reading are most likely to be affected by

parent teaching. Should the interventions focus on letter-sound knowledge with young children,

on sound blending and word reading with beginning readers, and on more fluent word reading

and comprehension with more advanced readers? Again, understanding what aspects of reading

are most affected by parent teaching awaits future research.

Should Educators Encourage Parents to Listen to Their Children Read?

Yes. The finding that training parents to listen to their children read has an impact on children’s

reading is consistent with the broad review conducted by Toomey (1993). Toomey’s literature
review was broader than the present meta-analysis because he included unpublished 

manuscripts and book chapters in his review of research on parents listening to their children

read. Nonetheless, both reviews point to the same conclusion: Encouraging and training parents

to listen to their children read can be effective in promoting reading acquisition.

Educators will want to know what is the most effective way to train parents to listen to their

children read. Given the limited number of relevant studies that met the selection criteria for 

this report, and the variability among these studies, no conclusions can be drawn regarding the

relative effectiveness of various listening approaches or combinations of approaches for

enhancing young children’s literacy skills. For example, it is unclear whether it is more effective

to provide children with corrective feedback to build accurate and efficient word reading skills,

to encourage children to use context clues to aid comprehension, or to praise and read along 

with children to promote self-confidence and motivation. Evidence on the relative effectiveness

of different approaches awaits further research. In the meantime, these aspects could be

incorporated in any training program.

It is the case that this type of intervention presupposes some level of reading fluency from

the parents. How best to implement the training with parents who have poor literacy skills

themselves remains to be investigated.

Should Educators Encourage Parents to Read to Their Children?

One of the most important findings here was the dearth of intervention research on parent

reading with children in kindergarten to grade 3. Parents are often told that reading to their 

child is the best way to prepare the child to learn to read. Given the wide acceptance of this

recommendation, one would expect it to have a strong research foundation. The present analysis,

however, revealed very limited intervention research on the topic for this age group. Only 

two of the 14 studies reviewed were interventions where parents read to their child. Most

disappointingly, the results of the two studies failed to find support for the idea that parent

reading enhanced early literacy.

In contrast to the present results, a meta-analysis conducted by Bus, van IJzendoorn, and

Pellegrini (1995) showed that there was a statistically significant link between parent-child book

reading at home and reading acquisition (with a child age range between 42 and 96 months).

They reported moderate effect sizes between book reading and early literacy or reading

achievement. That is, they reported combined effect sizes of 0.58 and 0.55 for early literacy 

(16 studies) and reading achievement (nine studies), respectively. In a similar vein, Scarborough 

and Dobrich (1994) reported a median correlation of 0.28 (seven studies) between parentpreschooler reading and reading achievement in grade school and a median correlation of 

0.27 between shared reading and early literacy (eight studies). To reconcile the differences in

conclusion between the present review and the other reviews, one has to consider the nature of

the literature reviewed as well as the inclusion/exclusion of language measures. Bus and others

as well as Scarborough and Dobrich reviewed many correlational studies. As discussed

previously, the difficulty with correlations is that they do not allow one to make statements about

causation, nor do they control for the possibility that the relation between the two key variables

is due to their common relation with a third variable. For instance, recent research shows that the

relations between the frequency and variability of book reading at home in kindergarten and

reading comprehension in grade 3 can be explained by their common association to children’s

vocabulary knowledge (see Sénéchal and LeFevre, 2002). 

20
The present review did not include correlational research or research with language

outcomes, but focused exclusively on intervention studies that assessed the role of parent

involvement in children’s reading. The findings of the two intervention studies that trained

parents to read to their child did not support the idea that reading books to children promotes

early literacy directly. It is possible, however, that the relation between book reading and reading

achievement is indirect. Three examples of possible indirect relations that could be tested in

intervention research are presented in the next paragraph.

It is possible that training parents to read to their child enhances the child’s language, 

which, in time, may result in better reading comprehension. In addition, it is also possible that

book reading increases children’s knowledge of literate discourse, which, in time, might facilitate

reading (for example, Purcell-Gates, McIntyre, and Freppon, 1995). Finally, book reading in

kindergarten might increase children’s motivation to read, which, in time, will result in more

frequent and fluent reading for pleasure.

In the meantime, reading books to children is an activity that should be encouraged, but

educators will have to be careful about the claims they make for the benefits of parent book

reading. Reading books to children can be encouraged because it is a wonderful sharing time,

and it exposes children to ideas, concepts, and language that can be novel, more varied, and

more complex than those introduced during parent-child conversations. 

Conclusion

In the present meta-analysis, home teaching and parent listening enhanced children’s literacy

skills. Although the two types of interventions produced positive effects, they did differ in

efficacy as well as the resources required from educators. Specifically, home teaching was twice

as effective in enhancing literacy than was parent listening to the child read aloud. Home

teaching, however, necessitates more resources from educators.

Asking parents to listen to their child read requires minimal resources from educators.

Educators can send information about reading in a handout and provide parents with appropriate

children’s books. Training parents to listen to their child read requires more resources because

educators need to prepare and give workshops where parents will learn specific techniques. Once

the techniques are acquired, however, parents are simply asked to apply them when they listen to

their child read. Here again, educators provide parents with appropriate children’s books. Finally,

training parents to teach their child with specific exercises and structured programs requires the

most resources from educators because they need to design or select the exercises and programs,

design or select suitable reading materials, and train parents.

Educators, when deciding which type of intervention to implement, will have to weigh the

differences in effectiveness across intervention type against the amount of resources needed to

implement the intervention.

21
Future Directions for Research

There are still many questions left unanswered. Researchers will want to understand better what

aspects of the interventions are responsible for the study outcomes. Many of these issues were

discussed in the previous sections. For instance, what are the beginning reading skills that are

most easily taught by parents? What is the optimal timing for parent teaching: before, during, or

after specific skills are taught in school? What is the role of corrective feedback when parents

listen to their child read? What are the types of children’s books that are most helpful? Is it the

case that parent teaching is most effective in the beginning phases of reading, whereas listening

to children read is most effective once children have acquired some reading fluency? How can

these interventions be implemented with parents who have low literacy skills themselves?

Some studies included in this review were difficult to analyze because they were written

vaguely, making it difficult to understand what the researchers did and what they found.

Moreover, 40% of the studies failed to report adequately the socioeconomic status of the

families, 76% did not report the education level of the parents, and none assessed the literacy

level of the parents. In addition, most studies did not provide enough precise information about

the duration and/or type of supportive feedback given to parents. The results of the present

review highlight the importance of collecting and reporting demographic information on the

participating families and of providing complete descriptions of the intervention conducted, how

the implementation was assessed, the measures used, and the means and standard deviations for

each of the measures used.

The results of the present review also highlight the importance of study quality because 

it affects the magnitude of the effect sizes. Four studies were excluded from the present 

synthesis because they did not include a control group. Moreover, 8% of the studies found 

were excluded because they did not provide sufficient information to calculate effect sizes.

Consider also that 81% of the studies that included a control group did not administer an

alternative treatment to the control families.

Greater attention to study design quality and to reporting precisely the findings will allow

researchers to have a greater impact on how best to help parents help their child learn to read.

22
References

Articles included in the meta-analyses are preceded by an asterisk. The Hewison (1988) study is

a follow-up to the study by Tizard and others (1982).

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*Faires, J., Nichols, W. D., & Rickelman, R. J. (2000). Effects of parental involvement in

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*Foster, S. M., & Bitner, T. R. (1998). A read-aloud project for at-risk kindergarten children and

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*Hannon, P. (1987). A study of the effects of parental involvement in the teaching of reading on

children’s reading test performance. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 57, 56–72.

23
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*a

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24

a The Leach and Siddall study included four conditions. The two most intensive conditions were labeled

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*Tizard, J., Schofield, W. N., & Hewison, J. (1982). Collaboration between teachers and parents

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25
Appendix: Statistical Formulas

Effect size (ES) calculations:

1. Cohen’s d, where t is treatment group and c is control group, and sqrt = square root. 

Mt – Mc / (sqrt(((Nt – 1)*(SDt

)

2

) + ((Nc – 1)*(SDc)

2

)) / ((Nt – 1)+(Nc – 1)))

2. In the studies without means and standard deviations, Cohen’s d was obtained as follows:

d equal Ns = 2t / sqrt (df error)

d unequal Ns = t(Nt + Nc) / sqrt (df error) * sqrt (Nt

*Nc)

t = sqrt F (that is, t can be replaced with the square root of F)

from p by using d = z (sqrt (1/Nt + 1/Nc))

Combining weighted effect sizes across studies, where weights acknowledge a study’s sample size:

1. Combining and weighting effect sizes were calculated according to formulas in Cooper

and Hedges (1994, p. 268).

dcombined = ∑(weightstudy * dstudy ) / (∑ weightstudy)

weightstudy = 1 / variancestudy

variancestudy = (Nt + Nc / Nt * Nc) + ((dstudy)

2 / 2 (Nt + Nc))

variance dcombined = 1 / (∑ weightstudy)

2. Tests of homogeneity for entire set of studies and for each class, as well as 95% CIs were

calculated according to Hasselblad and Hedges (1995, p. 172). 

X2 = ∑ weightstudy (dstudy – dcombined)

2 with k-1 dfs. (k = number of studies)

95% CIs = mean weighted d ± 1.96 * sqrt (variance dcombined)

3. Tests for outliers were done by computing Q for entire number of studies removing one

study at a time. If the study is an outlier, there should be a dramatic effect on Q with that

study removed (Hedges & Olkin, 1985, p. 256). 

4. Contrasts between two sets of studies were computed with the formulas below where 1

and 2 refer to each set of studies, respectively (Hasselblad and Hedges, 1995, p. 174):

z = (dcombined 1 – dcombined 2)/ sqrt(variance dcombined 1 + variance dcombined 2) 

95% CI: (dcombined 1 – dcombined 2) ± 1.96 * sqrt(variance dcombined 1 + variance

dcombined 2)

Fail safe number (N) where k is the number of studies in the analysis (Mullen and Rosenthal,

1985, p. 53):

N(p = .05) = (∑ zstudy / 1.645)2 – k

where zstudy = rstudy * sqrt (Nt + Nc) and rstudy = dstudy / sqrt (dstudy

2 + 4)

26
27

Study SummariesThe summaries are organized by intervention type. T = Treatment; C = ControlParents Read to Child

Intervention Participants Reading measures Results

Number Characteristics

Foster & Bitner (1998)Parents were encouraged to read aloud to their children daily. They werealso instructed on appropriate reading practices such as how to read aloudeffectively to their children, appropriate book choice, etc. Jordan, Snow, & Porche (2000) Parents engaged in scripted parent-child interactions and extended bookrelated discussions with their children around specified themes.Parents Listen to Child ReadHannon (1987)Teachers encouraged parents to listen to their children read aloud to themup to five times per week and sent home handouts that outlined suggestionsfor reading.

Children were at-risk for future difficultybecause of their lowsocioeconomic status. No information provided No information provided

An Observation Surveyof Early LiteracyAchievement (Clay,1993)—alphabet ComprehensiveAssessment ProgramNFER (Reading TestA)—readingcomprehensionYoung’s Group Reading

T: 19;C: 16 T: 177;C: 71T: 76;C: 81

T ~ CT ~ CT ~ C
Intervention Participants Reading measures Results

Number Characteristics

28

Leach & Siddall (1990) Study 1aT: Parents were trained to use the paired reading procedure.C: Parents listened to their child read and had received a brief summary ofsuggestions for helping their child read at home. Miller, Robson, & Bushell (1986)Parents were trained to use the paired reading procedure.Tizard, Schofield, & Hewison (1982)Parents listen to their child read. Researchers visited parents and childrenin their homes 2–3 times per term to observe the children reading to theirparents and to provide suggestions regarding good reading practice. Wilks & Clarke (1988)T: Parents were trained to increase the use of meaning, context, and phoniccues when listening to their child read.C: Mothers in the encouraged group received the same training as thetrained mothers received in the first two hour-long sessions, but did notattend the third and fourth training sessions. Mothers in the control groupreceived no training.

Normal beginningreaders participated.Their mean age was 5years and 7 months. Children had a deficit ofmore than 18 months inreading age and theirmean chronological agewas 9 years and10 months.The sample wasmultiracial and almostentirely working-class.Children aged 8 to 9years who were averageor below average readers. 

Neale:Accuracy &ComprehensionNeale:Accuracy &ComprehensionPretest: SouthgateGroup Reading Test;Posttest: NFER Test ANeale: Comprehension(Accuracy results notused for lack ofinformation necessaryto compute ES).

T: 10;C: 10 T: 33;C: 21T: 51;C: 86T: 14;C: 28

T > CAccuracy:T > CComprehension:T ~ CT > CT > C

~

Parents Listen to Child Read
29

Parents Teach Child to Read

Intervention Participants Reading measures Results

Number Characteristics

Faires, Nichols, & Rickelman (2000)Parents were trained with the Reading Recovery model (Clay, 1985). Itincluded rereading two or more unfamiliar books, letter identification,writing a sentence or a story, reassembling a cut-up sentence or a story, andreading a new book.Kraft, Findlay, Major, Gilberts & Hofmeister (2001) Parents were trained to choose a suitable reading environment, teach lettersound correspondence and blending of letter sounds, and methods of errorcorrection.Leach & Siddall (1990) Study 2aT: Parent training was derived from Teach Your Child To Read in 100 EasyLessons (TYCTOR, Englemann et al., 1983).C: Parents were trained to use the pause, prompt, praise technique whenthey listened to their child read.

No information provided Children between theages of 5 and 6 with noreported learningdifficulties. Parents werehighly educated and ofmiddle-classsocioeconomic status. Normal beginningreaders participated.Their mean age was 5years and 7 months. 

T: 4; C: 4 T: 20;C: 23T: 10;C: 10

Word recognitionWoodcock:Word recognition &Word attackNeale:Accuracy &Comprehension

T ~ CT > CT > C

~

aIn the meta-analysis, the two conditions that were most intensive were assigned as treatments and the two remaining conditions were randomly assigned

as control conditions.
30

Intervention Participants Reading measures Results

Number Characteristics

Mehran & White (1988)A parent-implemented tutoring program for struggling readers. Theprogram, adapted from Reading Made Easy (Harrison, 1981), included

basic procedures for teaching sounds and letters, basic sight words,blending of sounds, and decoding words. It provided tutoring techniquesand suggestions for reading activities.Niedermeyer (1970) A parent-assisted learning program that gave classroom-related practice to children at home. The program used practice exercises to learn to readone-syllable words, recognize and say beginning consonant sounds andvowel-consonant ending sounds, and blend previously-learned beginningand ending sounds.Searls, Lewis, & Morrow (1982)In the Parents as Tutors program, parents learned various methods ofimplementation such as games and reading activities, and they were givena detailed handbook about pre-reading skills and methods of teaching theseskills. The intervention included the use of weekly calendars containingdaily activities designed to reinforce reading skills taught at school. Vinograd-Bausell & Bausell (1987)Parents implemented a home tutoring program requiring no direct parenteducator interaction. Parents received a package containing 20 word cardsand instructions on how to use them.

At-risk for readingdifficulties; age 7;matched on a teacheradministered test ofreading competence. Schools were located in amiddle-class, suburbanarea.Grade 1 studentsmatched on pre-readingskills test scores, age,sex, race, andsocioeconomic status. No information provided

Woodcock-Johnson:compositeGraphemic knowledgeMAT: compositeWord recognition

T: 38;C: 38 T: 68;C: 80T: 25;C: 25T: 67;C: 69

T ~ CT > CT > CT > C

~

Parents Teach Child to Read