Assessing the Home Literacy Environment: Relationships to Child Language Comprehension and Expression

As the findings of many studies have shown, different aspects of children's home literacy environment are related to the development of their language competence. We designed the Home Literacy Environment Questionnaire (HLEQ) to evaluate the quality of different aspects of the home literacy environment. This paper presents the development of this instrument, including: (1) the construction of the instrument based on the theoretical background and findings about the relation between family environment and child language development; (2) examination of the construct validity of the HLEQ and (3) an evaluation of its empirical criterion validity through correlations with children's achievements on a language development scale and their storytelling ability. Language competence was assessed with a sample of 4-year-old children that attended a Slovenian preschool. Using factor analysis, five HLEQ factors were identified: Stimulation to use language, explanation (F1), Reading books to the child, visiting the library and puppet theater (F2), Joint activities and conversation (F3), Interactive reading (F4) and Zone-of-proximal-development stimulation (F5). The findings show that some aspects of the home literacy environment (F2, F4 and F5) are positively related to different measures of child language development at 4 years of age and also contribute to a prediction of child language competence. Four HLEQ factors (F1, F2, F3, and F5) were also positively related to maternal level of education.