Turkish adaptation of the children’s numeracy interest scale and its relationship with parental math involvement

Abstract Background Children’s numeracy interest is increasingly recognized as an important affective dimension of early mathematical development. However, to the best of my knowledge, no empirical study has directly examined the association between parental math involvement and children’s numeracy interest in Türkiye, and no validated Turkish-language instrument for assessing this construct has been reported. This study aimed to adapt the Children’s Numeracy Interest Scale into Turkish and examine whether parental math involvement predicted children’s numeracy interest. Methods The research comprised in two studies. Study 1 focused on the Turkish adaptation of the Children’s Numeracy Interest Scale and evaluated its psychometric properties using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Study 2 examined whether overall parental math involvement and its domains predicted children’s numeracy interest among parents of preschool children. The proposed models were tested using structural equation modeling, with relevant child and family characteristics included as control variables. Results The Turkish version of the Children’s Numeracy Interest Scale demonstrated a one-factor structure, good reliability, and acceptable model fit. Parental math involvement was positively associated with children’s numeracy interest and was a significant positive predictor in the structural model. When the domains of parental math involvement were examined simultaneously, only Numbers and Operations emerged as a significant positive predictor. Among the control variables, child age was also a significant positive predictor of children’s numeracy interest.