Exploring the Underlying Factor Structure of the Home Literacy Environment (HLE) in a Spanish Translation of the Familia Inventory

Abstract

Differences in children’s skills at the beginning of formal schooling have been reported, with Hispanic children, often performing below their Caucasian counterparts. The home literacy environment (HLE) has been reported to be the cause of the early differences, but the paucity of Spanish language instruments aimed at studying the HLE of Hispanic families has affected research in this important area. One available instrument is the Spanish version of the Familia Inventory, designed to assess family interactions related to literacy. Research has shown that the Spanish inventory is not equivalent to the original English version possibly due to an erroneous translation. The purpose of this study is to complete a psychometric examination of a re-translated Spanish language version of the Familia Inventory with a low-socioeconomic Spanish-speaking Hispanic sample using confirmatory (CFA) and exploratory factor analysis (EFA). The inventory was administered to 132 parents of preschoolers.

Results from CFA models revealed that the 10 a-priori subscales suggested by the developer of the inventory and a four-factor model suggested by a researcher did not yield adequate model fit with this sample. Follow-up analyses of individual subscales yielded poor fit for the majority of the subscales. Exploratory factor analysis using the original 57 items of the inventory suggested a five-factor model accounting for 43.3% of the variance. It is suggested that the inventory needs to be theoretically re-conceptualized.