home-based literacy program, what activities are needed, and how parents can learn how to implement the activities. Both closed- and open-ended questions will be used for the questionnaire to yield quantitative and qualitative results. The closed-ended question will be used to allow for statistical analysis of data. However since closed-ended question presents only a small set of alternatives from which to answer and findings from answers may be limited, open-ended questions will also be used. The open-ended questions allow for participants to answer questions in a more complete manner and have the potential to reveal additional information that may not have been anticipated by the experimenter.
Participants will represent the population of teachers and parents of students pre-kindergarten through first grade. The study sample will be chosen from all teachers and parents of students pre-kindergarten through first grade at a local elementary school, who will be asked to participate in the study. This convenient sample will represent the population studied and include all those who volunteer to participate in the study.
Home-Based Literacy Program Survey. The Home-Based Literacy Program Survey constructed by the investigator, was designed to help address the following research questions and hypotheses:
Research Question 2. What are the strategies and activities for literacy development?
Research Question 3. What are appropriate criteria and components of a successful literacy program?
Research Question 4. How can parents acquire the knowledge and skills related to the proposed home literacy activities?
Hypothesis 1: There will not be a significant difference between parent and teacher reports of the need for a home-based literacy program.
Hypothesis 2: There will not be a significant difference between parent and teacher reports of the need to help parents acquire home-based literacy skills.
The survey...