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The Family-School Partnership Lab at Vanderbilt University is dedicated to the scientific investigation of the reciprocal relationships among families, schools, and children.

  •  Dr. Hoover-Dempsey's talk at the PIRC National Conference is now available here.
This website contains information on papers and measures developed during the course of our research on the parental involvement process.

A recent major project involved a three-year research program designed to a) develop and refine scales necessary to test the Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler (1995, 1997) model of parental involvement and b) examine elements of the parental involvement process described by the model. The project was funded by the Office of Educational Research and Innovation (now Institute for Educational Science): OERI Grant # R305T010673: The Social Context of Parental Involvement: A Path to Enhanced Achievement.

Information on scales developed during this program project, a brief overview of some empirical results, a summary of changes to the original model suggested by scale development and related conceptual work, as well as appendices including the scales and questionnaires (parent and student) used in the final study of this project are reported in:
Hoover-Dempsey, K.V., & Sandler, H.M. (2005). Final Performance Report for OERI Grant # R305T010673: The Social Context of Parental Involvement: A Path to Enhanced Achievement. Presented to Project Monitor, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, March 22, 2005.
More detailed information on concepts and scales related to Levels 1 and 2 of the original model (Why do parents become involved?) is included in:
Green, C. L., Walker, J. M. T., Hoover-Dempsey, K. V., & Sandler, H. (2007). Parents’motivations for involvement in children’s education: An empirical test of a theoretical model of parental involvement. Journal of Educational Psychology. 99, 532-544.
(This study examined the ability of Level 1 of the Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler  model to predict types and levels of parental involvement during the elementary and middle school years. Predictor variables included parents’ motivational beliefs about involvement, perceptions of invitations to involvement from others, and perceived life context variables. Analyses  revealed that model constructs predicted significant portions of variance in parents’ home- and school-based involvement even when controlling for family SES. 
)
Walker, J. M. T., Wilkins, A. S., Dallaire, J., Sandler, H. M., & Hoover-Dempsey, K. V. (2005). Parental involvement: Model revision through scale development. Elementary School Journal, 106, 85-104
(Describes conceptual and methodological work related to model-based scale development; includes information on resulting revisions to Levels 1 and 2 of the original model.)

Hoover-Dempsey, K. V., Walker, J. M. T., Sandler, H. M., Whetsel, D., Green, C. L., Wilkins, A. S., & Closson, K. E. (2005). Why do parents become involved? Research findings and implications. Elementary School Journal, 106, 105-130 
(Reviews a broad sample of research published in the past decade related to the question: Why do parents become involved in children’s education?; offers specific suggestions for school practice and research based on review findings.)

One goal of the three-year research program was effective and helpful communication of study findings to participating schools. One sample of reports to schools, drawn from the first of the four specific studies included in the project, may be found by clicking here. Single copies of the report may be downloaded and printed for the reader’s personal research and study only.  

Papers from the longer term research effort, scale descriptions related to recent and prior work, information on current projects, and our original model of the parental involvement process may be accessed through the links on the left-hand side of this page.

Please contact us if you have difficult obtaining documents from our site, at manya.c.whitaker@vanderbilt.edu.





The Family-School Partnership Lab is part of the Psychology and Human Development Department, Peabody College, Vanderbilt University.