We are inviting parents/carers to answer some questions about their experience with helping their children learn to read at home as well as the support they receive from their school to do that. This is an online questionnaire study and participants have the option to also participate in an optional online interview so we can better understand the home-school relationship.  We hope to use our findings to create recommendations and resources for schools on how to strengthen the home-school connection and best support parent/carers in supporting their children’s early reading skills in Reception and Year 1. 

Parent/carers have the option to participate only in the questionnaire part of the study, or in the questionnaire and interview part of the study.

For the questionnaire part, we are asking parents/carers of Reception and Year 1 children to complete an online questionnaire. This will take about 15 minutes to fill in. The questions will focus on understanding the level of support parents/carers receive from their school, their experience with helping their children learn to read as well as how parents/carers feel about engaging with their child’s literacy-related schoolwork. We are interested in understanding this relationship from the teacher’s perspective too. Upon completion of the questionnaire, parents/carers will be asked if they would like to participate in the optional interview part of the study which involves an online interview that is audio (required) and video recorded (optional). Only if they are happy to take part in the interview part of the study, parent/carers will be asked to provide their email address to be contacted for the interviews. If preferred, parent/carers can only complete the questionnaire without volunteering for the interviews. 

For the interview part, we will email parents/carers that have completed the questionnaire and have expressed an interest to be interviewed to confirm whether they have or have not been selected for an interview. For selected participants the email will include further information about arranging a convenient time for the interview. Selected interview participants will be as asked to confirm their consent to be interviewed. We would like to conduct the online interviews with parents /carers to give them a chance to discuss in more depth their experiences with supporting their child’s early reading development as well as views on information and resources provided by school for this.

The online interviews will be conducted by Alex Zosimidou and will take place via Google Meet. The researcher will be happy to assist in case of technical difficulties. The interview questions will be open ended questions and it is up to you to decide how detailed you would like to answer each question. The interview can be conducted in English, Greek or Russian. Since the interviews will be recorded, participants will be given the option to decide between having their camera switched on (i.e. video and audio recording) or off (i.e. audio recording only). 

You do not need to have any previous knowledge or understanding on how children are learning to read, we would just be very grateful to have your input in the questionnaire and, optionally, the interviews. 

You will not be paid but we will draw three £50 voucher prizes after the questionnaire closed. We will randomly choose the winner among those participants that have left their email address at the end of the questionnaire for this.

There is no risk of physical or psychological harm to you or your child in taking part. The questionnaire and interview questions do not touch upon any sensitive or personal topics. If you do not want to answer any of the questions, you can choose not to. If you have any concerns, please raise this. You can email me on alex.zosimidou@sheffield.ac.uk , or you can contact the project supervisor, Dr Silke Fricke, on s.fricke@sheffield.ac.uk. 

There may be no immediate benefits to you or your child from participating in the study. It is hoped that the research will add to information on how to best support the home-school connection in relation to parents helping their children with their ‘learning to read’ journey. At the end of the project, we will provide an anonymous summary of the findings to participating schools and families by sharing the summary report with the schools and uploading it onto the project website. You will also be given the option to indicate whether you would be happy to be contacted for the next phase of the project, the co-production of recommendations and resources for schools on how to strengthen the home-school connection and best support parent/carers in supporting their children’s early reading skills in Reception and Year 1.

The data that is collected will be stored on the University of Sheffield secure drives. Only the research team will have access to the data. All the data is stored anonymously. The anonymous results of the study will be shared with schools uploaded to the project website. They may be published, for example in conference presentations or journal articles. Information will always be anonymous. Care will be taken to ensure that you and your child’s school cannot be identified. The anonymous results will be kept by the University. Due to the nature of this research, it is likely that other researchers may find the data collected to be useful in answering future research questions. We will ask for your explicit consent for your anonymous data to be shared in this way (for example, by making it available in the University’s data archive). Email addresses for the optional interview and the prize draw will be collected via a separate web link to ensure email addresses are not linked with questionnaire responses.

This project has been ethically reviewed by the University of Sheffield, following the Ethics Review Procedure, as administered by the School of Allied Health Professions, Nursing & Midwifery; Faculty of Health at the University of Sheffield. 

If you would like more information about this project or have any questions, please contact Alexandra Zosimidou at alex.zosimidou@sheffield.ac.uk. You can also contact the research supervisor Dr Silke Fricke at s.fricke@sheffield.ac.uk.