Examining family-preschool partnership: A literature review of the existing measures and their psychometric properties

Abstract

Family-preschool partnership is recognised as an important relationship between parents and teachers contributing to preschool child outcomes which has received increasing attention the last decades. This has led to the development of several tools measuring different aspects of family-preschool partnership. A synthesis of the information according to the psychometric properties of these measures is lacking and would inform researchers in choosing measures when evaluating family-preschool partnerships. The main purpose of this article was therefore to find instruments aiming to assess family-preschool partnership that have been tested for their psychometric properties and to review these properties based on the frequency with which researchers have tested them. Four electronic databases were searched using the key words: family-preschool partnership, parental engagement, family involvement, parent involvement, parent-teacher relationship combined with scale, measure, measuring, assessment, evaluation, psychometric, test. Fifteen tools assessing family-preschool partnership were identified, of which only seven had been tested more than once for their psychometric properties. The majority of the existing measures require extra validation work. Taking into consideration the interest in this relationship and its effects on preschool child development, it seems important for the field to promote the use of validated and well-established measures.

Keywords

• family-preschool partnership
• literature review
• tool
• psychometric properties