Examining Parent Reading Belief Inventory (PRBI)’s Factor Structure: With A Sample of Chinese Parents: Caveats and Modification^*

Previous studies about the Parent Reading Belief Inventory (PRBI) have shown discrepant results and have primarily focused on the western hemisphere. The present study aims to explore the fundamental factor structure of the PRBI and re-examine the reliability and validity in a large number of Chinese parents in southern China, expecting to show a multifaceted structure of parental reading belief from diverse socioeconomic status (SES). The significance of this study is underscored by its potential to provide a more culturally sensitive and contextually relevant measure of parental reading beliefs, which can contribute to a better understanding of literacy practices in the Chinese context. PRBI was first introduced by DeBaryshe and Binder (1994) to assess parents’ reading perception, attitude, value, and belief, which is a 42-item instrument composed of 7 subscales. Given the cultural disparities in parenting beliefs, linguistic subtleties, item relevance, and the imperative for contextual adaptation, the original PRBI may not be directly applicable to the Chinese context and requires adaptation. To address this, the study recruited 1,656 parents to complete the PRBI inventory and Home Literacy Environment Questionnaire. The lack of validation for the core factor structure of the Western-focused PRBI warrants careful reconsideration and should be interpreted with caution as researchers in these studies failed to affirm the PRBI’s reliability or validity for their specific cultural group. Therefore, the current study’s revisions aim to address these issues, allowing for a more accurate assessment of parental reading beliefs among Chinese parents. Findings show that the original PRBI exhibited poor fit parameters using confirmatory factor analysis and thus was revised to an inventory with 33 items. This revision fills a needed gap to assess parents’ reading belief in the Chinese context as an instrumental measure to examine parental involvement, early literacy practices, and perceptions on preschooler’s shared-book reading experience and early language development.