Parental influence on children's educational TV viewing

Parental Influence on Children
during Educational Television
Viewing in Immigrant Families
Yuting Zhaoa,b,* and Beth M. Phillipsa,b
aDepartment of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems,
Florida State
University, Tallahassee, FL USA
bFlorida Center for Reading Research, Tallahassee, FL USA
It has been suggested by researchers that educational television
programmes may support the language and literacy development
for children, especially those in immigrant families. In an
immigrant
family, many family characteristics appear to be related to
educa-
tional television programme viewing of children at home, for
exam-
ple, parental acculturation (the process of adapting to the new
culture) and parentalmediation (supervision and guidance) of
televi-
sion viewing. In the present work, the parental influence on
children
during educational television viewing was studied
quantitatively,
based on a sample (n=171) of immigrant families with children
aged
3–6years collected across the U.S. The results have revealed
that
significant differences existed between Asian and Hispanic
groups
in coviewingmediation and in their children’s educational

television
viewing. Furthermore, language in parental acculturation
signifi-
cantly predicted instructive and restrictive parental mediation,
and
parental occupation significantly predicted language in parental
acculturation. This study initiates the attention to the topic of
educa-
tional television viewing in immigrant families, which warrants
further investigations in the future as the Asian and Hispanic
immi-
grant population increases rapidly in the U.S. Copyright © 2013
John
Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Key words: parental influence; educational television;
immigrant
family; parental mediation; parental acculturation
The period frombirth to 6years old for a child is themost critical
and intensive one in
terms of developing language, as the brain continues growing.
Language develop-
ment, which occurs during this period, is fundamental for
children to be successful
in modern society (Hoff, 2005). As importantly, emergent
literacy development, as
*Correspondence to: Yuting Zhao, Department of Educational
Psychology and Learning
Systems, Florida State University, 3210 Stone Building, 1114
West Call Street, Tallahassee,
FL 32306, USA. E-mail: [email protected]
Infant and Child Development
Inf. Child. Dev. 22: 401–421 (2013)
Published online 29 May 2013 in Wiley Online Library

(wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/icd.1798
Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
a later outcome of language development, has been related to
reading achievement
in school (Storch & Whitehurst, 2001). This early childhood
period is the best and
most effective time for a child to acquire language and literacy
skills, especially when
immersed within a rich linguistic environment (Roberts,
Jurgens, & Burchinal, 2005).
However, some children from at-risk families (i.e. in poverty
and with low parental
education) are not as likely to be supported by their home
environment (Hart &
Risley, 1995; Neuman, 2006). A group that may be particularly
at-risk includes
children in immigrant families, who often face multiple risk
factors associated with
language learning. These factors are linked to the home literacy
environment and,
thus, ultimately to child outcomes (Storch & Whitehurst,
2001).These children, who
enter school with limited basic literacy skills, may experience
difficulties later in
school (Phillips & Lonigan, 2009). In an attempt to improve the
disadvantaged situ-
ation of children in at-risk families, some researchers have
found that educational
television is likely to be an aid to the aforementioned issue
(Uchikoshi, 2005, 2006).
In the present work, we studied the family characteristics that
could impact educa-

tional television viewing of children in a sample of immigrant
families potentially
having at-risk backgrounds. Specifically, several key constructs,
such as family
socio-economic status (SES), educational television programme
viewing, parental
mediation of children’s viewing and parental acculturation have
been investigated.
Each of these is briefly addressed later.
Family SES, Home Literacy Environment and Immigration
Status
A growing body of research indicates that SES is a complex and
multi-aspect
construct including family income, parents’ education and
parental occupation
(Phillips & Lonigan, 2005; Storch & Whitehurst, 2001). Family
SES explained 42%
of the variance in the rate of vocabulary growth of children at
the age of 3 years (Hart
& Risley, 1995). Low-SES status is a substantial disadvantage
for children’s emergent
literacy development (Storch & Whitehurst, 2001). One of the
ways that family SES
might affect child outcomes is through the home literacy
environment (Storch &
Whitehurst, 2001). The home literacy environment refers to
literacy activities (e.g.
shared reading, rhyming games and watching educational
television) that parents
utilized to develop children’s language skills(Burgess, Hecht, &
Lonigan, 2002).
Families from low-SES backgrounds are often less likely to
provide a rich home
literacy environment (Phillips & Lonigan, 2009).

In general, immigrant families often facemore hardship than
native-born families,
including crowded living conditions, food insecurity, poor
health care and limited
English proficiency (Dinan, 2006; Fix, Zimmermann, & Passel,
2001). However, there
are some distinct family characteristics among different
immigrant groups.
According to the U.S. Census Current Population Reports (U.S.
Census Bureau,
2009a), Asian American families had the highest mean annual
income ($90 811),
compared with Hispanic American families ($52 229), African
American families
($46 046) and White families ($73 240). In terms of educational
level, approximately
48.6% of Asian Americans had a college degree or higher,
whereas only 11.8% of
Hispanic Americans possessed a college degree or higher (U.S.
Census Bureau,
2009b). In 2008, there were 1.4 million children aged 5–9years
speaking a language
other than English at home in the U.S. Recent surveys indicate
that among these chil-
dren, the largest group of children with spoken English
difficulty is Hispanic/Latino
children (22.9%), followed byAsian children (20.3%; National
Center for Educational
Statistics, 2010).
Given that family background characteristics conferring risk
frequently occur at
the same time, children in immigrant families are often less
likely to be supported

402 Y. Zhao and B.M. Phillips
Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Inf. Child. Dev. 22:
401–421 (2013)
DOI: 10.1002/icd
by their home literacy environment. Consistent with this
premise, Farver, Eppe,
and Ballon (2006) explored the home literacy environments of
Latino children
aged 4–5.5 years, and they found that several family
characteristics were signifi-
cantly related to the home literacy environment of Latino
children, including
family SES, parental literacy involvement, parents’ years in the
U.S. and parental
literacy habits.
Educational Television Programmes
Television has penetrated almost every aspect of family life
since its invention. It
was reported that 99% of the households (115.9 million) in the
U.S. owned at least
one television set in 2011 (Nielsen, 2011). A nationwide survey
by Rideout and
Hamel (2006) provided results that 99% of U.S. families with
children 6 years or
younger owned at least one television, and 43% of these
children watched televi-
sion for at least 2 hours in a typical day. Compared with other
activities, such as
reading books (40min), listening to music (48min) and playing
video games

(6min), watching television (59min) was the activity on which
children 4–6 years
spent the most time per day (Rideout & Hamel, 2006).
The current definition of educational television by the Federal
Communications
Commission (FCC) is ‘programming that furthers the
educational and informational
needs of children 16 years of age and under in any respect,
including the child’s intel-
lectual/cognitive or social/emotional needs’ (2006, p. 2).
Previous research suggests
that educational television programmes are different from
general television
programmes and that they may have distinct influences on
children’s development
(Anderson, Huston, Schmitt, Linebarger, & Wright, 2001;
Jennings, Hooker, &
Linebarger, 2009; Linebarger & Piotrowski, 2009). For
example, most of the educa-
tional television programmes on the Public Broadcasting
Service (PBS) are research
based (Jennings et al., 2009). The content seems not only to
attract children to watch
but also to support the language and literacy development of
children (Jennings
et al., 2009; Uchikoshi, 2006; Wright et al., 2001). The
influence on literacy has been
extensively studied regarding emergent literacy (Anderson et
al., 2001; Linebarger
& Piotrowski, 2009; Uchikoshi, 2005, 2006), vocabulary
knowledge (Linebarger &
Piotrowski, 2010; Wright et al., 2001) and motivation to read
and write (Anderson
et al., 2001; Wright et al., 2001). Many of these studies utilized
experimental designs

(Linebarger & Piotrowski, 2009; Uchikoshi, 2005, 2006), and
thus, one may appropri-
ately draw the conclusion from the empirical results that
educational television can
support the literacy development of children.
Given their educational characteristics, research-based
educational television
programmes may serve as an element of the home literacy
environment. Family
SES appears to relate to children’s educational television
viewing, although the pre-
vious literature on their relation was somewhat inconsistent.
Some research studies
suggested a positive relation (Huston, Wright, Marquis, &
Green, 1999; Huston &
Wright, 1997), whereas some failed to find the relation (Pinõn,
Huston, & Wright,
1989). Phillips and Lonigan’s results (2009) indicated a
negative relation between
family SES (i.e. parental education and family income) and
overall television viewing
amount, as well as educational television programme viewing.
These inconsistencies
may arise because first, some studies (Huston et al., 1999;
Huston & Wright, 1997)
only asked about one specific educational television
programme, Sesame Street.
Second, one study (Pinõn et al., 1989) was conducted two
decades ago, and the
results may not be generalizable tomore recent family
environments. There has been
a substantial increase in the percentage of young children,
particularly those from
Educational TV Viewing in Immigrant Families 403

401–421 (2013)
DOI: 10.1002/icd
middle and upper middle class households, attending preschools
rather than being
at home before attending kindergarten (U. S. Department of
Commerce, 2010), and
this may interact with the time allocated to television viewing
such that the overall
amount of television viewing by young children is simplymuch
lower than previous
in these families (Christakis & Garrison, 2009). In addition, the
explosion of cable
television and Internet-based media content available to
families with more
discretionary income might dilute the viewing time for free-
access PBS stations that
broadcast educational television. To further explore this topic,
the present study was
intended to offer additional insight into how family SES is
related to children’s
educational television viewing.
Parental Mediation
Most of the time, children watch television programmes at home
with their
parents; thus, inevitably, they are impacted by their parents’
decisions on the
content and amount of television viewing. Parental mediation
refers to just such
parental supervision and guidance of children’s television

viewing. A study by
Valkenburg, Krcmar, Peeters, and Marseille (1999) included
telephone interviews
with 519 Dutch parents whose children were aged 5–12years.
They utilized
varimax-rotated exploratory factor analysis to extract three
factors (i.e. instructive,
restrictive and coviewing) of parental mediation of television
viewing. Instructive
mediation is that parents not only know very well the content
and the characters
but also discuss these aspects with their children and guide
them to think. Restrictive
mediation refers to the restriction from parents on the amount,
the times and the
content of children’s viewing. Coviewing mediation is that
parents are physically
present to watch television programmes together with their
children (not necessarily
creating educational occasions). The studies of Warren (2003,
2005) also supported
these three strategies of parental mediation through two surveys
in the U.S. from
129 middle-income families (87% Caucasian) and 306 low-
income families (69%
African American and 18% Caucasian), respectively. Warren
(2005) provided three
models examined by path analyses for these three types of
parental mediation and
found that parental education was a significant predictor for
parental mediation.
Atkin, Greenberg, and Baldwin (1991) earlier contextualized
these three types of
parental mediation of children’s television viewing (i.e.
instructive, restrictive and

coviewing mediation) within Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model
(i.e. microsystem,
mesosystem, exosystem and macrosystem). Bronfenbrenner
(1979) emphasized the
dynamics between a developing child and his or her
environment. The microsystem
is defined as bidirectional interactions and activities in a
person’s immediate
surroundings (Atkin et al., 1991). For instance, under the
circumstances of children’s
television viewing, parental involvement, children’s age and
interpersonal interac-
tions at home all belong to the bidirectional relationships in a
domestic microsystem.
Next, surrounding the microsystem is the mesosystem, which
provides connections
between microsystems to advance development. Exosystem
refers to multiple social
settings influencing the development of childrenwithout their
direct participation. In
this system, community life and family SES (i.e. parental
education and income)
seem to affect children’s television viewing. Macrosystem is the
outmost level that
consists of cultural consistencies. It is ‘various socioeconomic,
ethnic, religious, and
other sub-cultural groups, reflecting contrasting belief systems
and lifestyles’
(Bronfenbrenner, 1979, p. 26). In the present study, the ethnic
cultures of different
immigrant groups and parents’ different coping strategies in
adapting to the
new culture seem to serve as the macrosystem that may affect
children’s

401–421 (2013)
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television viewing (e.g. some Hispanic families’ values of
educacion and familism
and some Asian families’ value of collectivism, Bornstein &
Cote, 2003; Reese,
Balzano, Gallimore, & Goldenberg, 1995; Romero, Robinson,
Haydel, Mendoza,
& Killen, 2004).
Parental Acculturation
Parental acculturation is another variable that appears to affect
children’s
educational television programme viewing in immigrant
families. Two models have
described the phenomenon of acculturation. Gordon (1964)
claimed that accultura-
tion is the process by which a person is gradually absorbed into
the host culture
(linear or unidirectional models). However, the previous model
was extended to be
bidirectional and two-dimensional by Berry (1980); that is,
people are able to acquire a
new culture without necessarily losing their original one.
During the process of
parental acculturation (i.e. when parents in immigrant families
adapt to the host
culture), parents could employ acculturation strategies such as
integration (selectively
learning the new culture while maintaining the old one),

assimilation (being totally
absorbed into the new culture and not wanting to keep the old
one), separation
(separating themselves from the new culture) and
marginalization (trying to have
nothing to do with either the new culture or the old one; Sam,
2006). Portes and
Rumbaut (2006) claimed that there was no particular
acculturation pattern that fits
all individuals or different immigrant groups. A number of
applied studies, which
have been conductedwith the guidance of the two
acculturationmodels, led to some
relevant findings concerning the various aspects of
acculturation impacts. For
example, integration and assimilation relate positively to school
achievement (Eng
et al., 2008), parenting (White, Roosa, Weaver, & Nair, 2009)
and the home literacy
environment (Farver et al., 2006).
In summary, the existing literature suggests that family
characteristics are closely
linked to the home literacy environment and, thus, ultimately to
child outcomes.
Given that many immigrant children often struggle without
special help, their
problems have the potential to increase. Because educational
television programmes
may support the development of future literacy skills (Anderson
et al., 2001), and
PBS can be accessed by most of these children, parents could
help these children
develop literacy skills in part via educational television
viewing. Research also indi-
cates that children’s programme viewing is affected by parental

mediation, family
SES and the general home literacy environment (Farver et al.,
2006; Warren, 2003,
2005). As well, in immigrant families, parental acculturation
appears to serve as the
background construct that intertwines with family SES (Farver
et al., 2006). There-
fore, it is important to study parental acculturation and parental
mediation behav-
iours associatedwith children’s educational television viewing
in a high-risk sample.
The objective of this studywas to investigate relations among
family SES, parental
mediation, parental acculturation and children’s educational
television programme
viewing in immigrant families, in particular within both Asian
and Hispanic fami-
lies. Previous literature indicated that there was a significant
difference between
Asian and Hispanic families regarding family income and
parental education (U. S.
Census Bureau, 2009a, 2009b). In addition, Asian and Hispanic
immigrants are
currently the largest two immigrant groups in the U.S. (Dinan,
2006). The following
research questions were addressed: (RQ1) Is there a significant
difference between
the Asian and Hispanic children in the amount of viewing of
programmes? (RQ2) Is there a significant difference between
the Asian and Hispanic
children in the types of parental mediation of television
viewing? (RQ3) Is there a

401–421 (2013)
DOI: 10.1002/icd
significant difference between the Asian and Hispanic children
in parental accultur-
ation patterns? (RQ4) Overall, what are the relations among
parental education and
occupation, parental acculturation, parental mediation of
television viewing, and
children’s amount of educational programme viewing? On the
basis of the previous
literature (e.g. Atkin et al., 1991; Warren, 2003, 2005;
Valkenburg et al., 1999), we
anticipated that the outcomes in parental mediation, parental
acculturation and
educational television viewing by their children would be
different between Asian
and Hispanic groups and that family SES indicators and parental
mediation behav-
iours would predict children’s educational television viewing
amount. For example,
we hypothesized that parental mediation operates as a partial
mediating variable for
the relation between parental acculturation and children’s
educational programme
viewing amount. In light of mixed prior findings on SES
indicators, we did not make
a specific directional prediction regarding their relation to
viewing but rather just posited that there would be significant
relations. Given the
absence of substantial prior investigation of the other possible

relations among
acculturation indicators, parental mediation behaviours and
children’s educational
television viewing, we considered these aspects of the model as
exploratory and
did not have explicit a priori hypotheses for each pathway.
METHOD
Participants
Eligible participants were parents from immigrant families in
the U.S. with children
between 3 and 6years old. According to the 2010 Census
Questionnaire Reference Book,
Hispanic Americans or Latino are immigrants who come from
Spain, Mexico, Puerto
Rico, Cuba or Spanish-speaking countries of Central and South
America. Asian
Americans are immigrants who come from Asian countries such
as China, Korea,
Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia,
Singapore, Thailand
and Cambodia (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). Considering
acculturation processes
indicating that immigrants appear to be more assimilated into
the host culture after
three generations (Sam, 2006), it is likely that parents in
immigrant families were
most appropriate for the study if they were within three
generations of arrival in
the U.S. The first generation includes people who were born
outside the U.S., the
second generation includes people whowere born in the U.S. to
foreign-born parents
and the third generation includes people who were born in the

U.S. to U.S.-born
parents (Glick & White, 2004). A mechanism utilized for
increasing potential
participation was that the survey was available for completion
both in paper and
online. Prior research demonstrated that samples collected by
electronic survey were
diverse in terms of demographic features such as gender, SES,
age and geographic
region (Kim, Chelladurai, & Trail, 2007; Shannon& Bradshaw,
2002). Incentives were
also utilized in that participants were rewarded by lottery for
their completion of the
survey. Furthermore, schools, which helped to distribute some
of the surveys,
received a thank-you gift.
The sample (n=171) was composed of 45.0% Asians, 46.8%
Hispanics, 7.0%
European-Americans, and 1.2%AfricanAmericans. Participants
came from 17 differ-
ent states across the U.S. Fourteen participants were neither
Asian nor Hispanic, but
theywere eligible participants and thuswere retained in the
overall sample analyses.
Overall, 151 (21.0%) electronic survey responses were received
of 706 emailed cover
letters with survey links and 51 telephone call follow-ups, and
20 (6.0%) paper
surveys were received of 300 mailed surveys. It should be noted
that there was not
401–421 (2013)

DOI: 10.1002/icd
a specific way to know how many different people were given
the survey links or
copies by these schools or organizations, so the response rate
was an approximated
calculation (i.e. each cover letter was likely distributed to
multiple eligible individ-
uals).The demographic characteristics of children and families
overall and by groups
of Asian and Hispanic are presented in Table 1. Of the 171
returned surveys, 47
(27.5%) were completed by fathers and 124 (72.5%) were
completed by mothers.
Measures
A parent survey with four parts was created to measure
children’s educational
television viewing amounts, parental mediation and parental
acculturation. The first
part of the survey consisted of six items that investigated the
background of parents
including gender, ethnicity, generation, education, occupation
and household annual
income. The second part of the survey, including five questions,
asked parents about
their children’s background such as siblings, age and gender,
children’s language use
preference at home and school, and children’s television
viewing (viewing amount
and the content). In terms of viewing content, 29 educational
television programmes

Table 1. Child and family demographic characteristics overall
and by group
All Asian Hispanic
Sample size 171 77 80
Family characteristics
Parental education (years) Some college College High school
M= 14.54 (SD=4.27) M= 16.68 (SD= 4.01) M= 12.36 (SD=
3.09)
Family annual income
<$16 000 15.2% 22.1% 11.3%
$17 000–30 000 29.2% 23.4% 33.8%
$30 000–75 000 25.2% 26.0% 25.0%
$75 000–100 000 14.6% 14.3% 12.5%
$100 000–150 000 11.7% 7.8% 16.3%
>$150 000 4.1% 6.5% 1.3%
Number of children by
family (mean)
2.04 (SD=1.12) 1.82 (SD= 1.06) 2.28 (SD= 1.18)
Generation (parents) 88.8% First 94.7% First 83.8% First
11.2% Second 5.3% Second 16.3% Second
Child characteristics
Gender 49.4% boys 48.7% boys 47.5% boys
Age (years) M=4.74 (SD= 1.21) M=4.59 (SD= 1.61) M= 4.88
(SD=1.24)
Children numbers by age Age 3: 38 Age 3: 18 Age 3: 16
Age 4: 28 Age 4: 16 Age 4: 10
Age 5: 51 Age 5: 22 Age 5: 26
Age 6: 53 Age 6: 20 Age 6: 28

Born in the U.S. 73.8% 64.0% 87.3%
Language use at home 32.9% English 43.4% English 15.5%
English
36.5% Spanish 32.9% Chinese 77.5% Spanish
16.8% Chinese 23.7% Others 7.6% Others
14.9% Others
Language use at school 95.9% English 96.1% English 96.3%
English
Note. The age information for one child was missing for the
Asian group.
401–421 (2013)
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from PBS were listed. Parents were asked to mark all
programmes that their child often watched (i.e. at least once a
week). The third part
of the survey contained 16 items – 15 of them (a= .90)were
adapted from the 5-point
Likert scale of parental mediation of television viewing
fromValkenburg et al. (1999),
who provided preliminary evidence of validity via factor
analysis. Several example
items are ‘how often do you try to help this child understand
what they see in an
educational television programme’ for instructive mediation,
‘how often do you

forbid your child to watch certain programmes’ for restrictive
mediation and ‘how
often do you watch together because you both like an
educational programme’ for
coviewingmediation. The fourth part of the survey (a= .70)was
adapted fromMarin
and Gamba (1996) and Stilling (1997) to measure parental
acculturation in three
aspects of language, food andmedia (22 items in total). The
validity of these accultur-
ation items was also examined by factor analysis (Marin &
Gamba, 1996), which
supported the categories of language (i.e. language use and
proficiency) and media.
The food category (two items) was added into the survey,
following suggestions by
Arends-Tóth and van de Vijer (2006) in assessment of
psychological acculturation.
Two item categories (i.e. American and ethnic) were
constructed in the acculturation
measure: a score of 33 and higher in the first category signified
high American
preferences and, in the second category, signified high ethnic
preferences. Through
use of these cut-off scores, acculturation patterns among
participants are presented
as four categories for descriptive purposes: integrated (high
American/high ethnic),
assimilated (high American/low ethnic), separated (low
American / high ethnic) and
marginalized (low American / low ethnic). However, for
statistical analyses, continu-
ous data for each aspect of acculturation were used. Example
items included ‘How
often do you speak English’, ‘How often do you eat your own
ethnic food’ and

‘How often do you watch television programmes in English’.
Procedure
Surveys were translated by native speakers in Spanish and
Chinese. The two
languages were selected because virtually all Hispanic
immigrants speak
Spanish and the largest population subgroup among Asian
Americans is Chinese
(23%; U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). The survey was distributed to
parents in both
English and the anticipated home language, so that parents
could select the language
in which they were most comfortable to respond. Before
distribution, back
translations were completed, and native speakers with an
educational psychology
and linguistics background checked all the wording of these
items. There were
several sources for recruiting eligible participants. First, the
authors contacted the
directors of centres and organizations for immigrants such as
the Hispanic American
Association and the AsianAmericanAssociation and asked for
their help to distribute
surveys. Second, the authors contacted international centres or
similar centres at
universities across the U.S., which served many international
students and their
families. Third, the authors contacted schools and child care
centres in metropolitan
areas known to have large eligible populations and asked for
their help to distribute
surveys. Fourth, the authors also collected some convenience
samples, such as

contacting schools and child care centres known to serve
immigrant populations that
have participated in prior research studies. Parents were
contacted by either the
researcher or their director (e.g. the director of a child care
centre or of a community
organization) via email or mail. Depending on their preferences,
each parent
participated by either visiting the website where they could
complete the survey or
returning the completed survey forms in the postage-paid
envelopes provided.
401–421 (2013)
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RESULTS
The results are presented in three parts: the first part includes
the sample descriptive
statistics; the second part includes one-way ANOVA tests of the
group differences
between Asian and Hispanic families in educational television
viewing amount,
and parental mediation and acculturation types; the third part is
the path analyses
of the overall relations among these variables.
Preliminary Analyses
Some transformations of coding were made to parental

demographic variables such
that categorical education levels were recalculated into average
years in which one
would achieve such educational levels (e.g. high school=
12years; Master’s degree=
18years). Standardized scores for categories of occupation were
utilized (Kim, Han,
Shin, Kim, & Lee, 2005). First, the nominal variables were
transformed into ordinal
variables according to aU.S. Census list of occupation ranks.
Then, each occupational
rank used by the Census corresponded to a standardized score;
these scores were
normalized and standardized from national income and
education distributions
associated with each occupation (e.g. manual workers = 46 and
managers = 59;
Green, 1970). Results indicated that more parents in Hispanic
families were born in
the U.S. than parents in Asian families, whereas Asian parents
had a higher educa-
tional level than did Hispanic parents (Table 1). Most families
reported income in
the range of $17 000–30 000; however, the nonsignificant
results of chi-square tests
for independence (w [5]2 = 9.50, p= .09) demonstrated that
there was no statistically
significant difference in annual income between Asian and
Hispanic families. The
correlation between education and occupation was statistically
significant and
positive (r= .68, p< .01).
The means and standard deviations for parental mediation and
parental
acculturation are presented in Table 2.The descriptive

categorization of acculturation
types indicated that the majority of the sample were classified
as integrated (70%
overall, 76% Asian families, 64% Hispanic families), whereas
approximately 24% of
Table 2. Descriptive statistics, one-way ANOVA and Welch
tests
All (n= 171) Asian (n=77) Hispanic (n= 80) ANOVA or
Welch F values
M SD M SD M SD
Educational TV viewing 12.33*
Parental mediation
Instructive 15.93 4.43 15.88 3.41 16.14 5.23 .14 (W)
Restrictive 16.86 4.86 17.61 3.58 16.20 5.82 3.28 (W)
Coviewing 17.76 3.92 16.19 3.30 19.62 3.42 39.72**
Parental acculturation
Language 30.81 5.88 31.28 4.79 30.08 6.83 1.62 (W)
Food 4.90 1.37 4.66 1.09 5.03 1.61 2.70 (W)
Media 24.84 3.23 24.45 3.39 25.13 3.20 1.63 (W)
Note. M=mean; SD= standard deviation. A (W) after an F value
means the assumption of homogeneity
of variances were violated and the Welch tests were conducted
and reported; the tests for the other
variables were one-way ANOVA.
*p< .01, **p< .001.
401–421 (2013)

DOI: 10.1002/icd
the sample were classified as separated. None were
marginalized, and approxi-
mately 4% were assimilated; this represented no Asian families
but 11% of the
Hispanic families. There were significant, positive correlations
between instructive
mediation, and restrictive and coviewing mediation (r= .68, p<
.01; and r= .39,
p< .01), respectively (Table 3). Language, one aspect of
parental acculturation, was
positively correlated with instructive and restrictive – two types
of parental media-
tion (r= .31, p< .01; and r= .38, p< .01).
The hours that children viewed television, including educational
television, were
self-reported by parents both for weekdays and weekends.
Reported hours ranged
from 0 to 8hours per day. On average, children in immigrant
families watched PBS
shows 2.06hours per day, whereas they watched other general
television pro-
grammes 1.44hours per day. Restrictive mediation and parental
education were
negatively correlated with children’s educational programme
viewing amount
(r=�.20, p< .05, and r=�.27, p< .01, respectively; Table 3).
Asian and Hispanic Group Differences: One-way ANOVA Tests
One-way ANOVA tests were conducted to see whether there
were significant

differences between Asian and Hispanic families in children’s
educational televi-
sion viewing, parental mediation and acculturation (RQ1, RQ2
and RQ3, respec-
tively). To control for Type I error, the Bonferroni correction
(Shaffer, 1995) was
applied to each ANOVA test, and only results after correction
are reported as signif-
icant. A one-way ANOVA analysis indicated that the difference
in the amounts of
viewing educational programmes was statistically significant
between Asian and
Hispanic children, F(1, 152) = 12.33, p= .00, Z2 = .08; Table 2.
The effect size was
moderate (Ferguson, 2009). The assumption of homogeneity of
variances was
checked (Levene, 1960), and the assumption was met (p= .20).
One-way ANOVA were also conducted to test for group
differences in each of the
three types of parental mediation (i.e. instructive, restrictive
and coviewing). The re-
sults showed that the difference in frequency of coviewing
mediation was statistically
significant between Asian and Hispanic parents, F(1,
151)=39.72, p= .00, Z2 = .21;
Table 2, whereas there were no statistically significant
differences in instructive,
F(1, 151)= .13, p= .72, and restrictive mediation behaviours,
F(1, 151) =3.18,
Table 3. Correlations among observed variables
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1.Education 1

2.Occupation .68** 1
3.Instructive mediation .08 �.05 1
4.Restrictive mediation .18* .01 .68** 1
5.Coviewing mediation �.22* �.15 .39** .16* 1
6.Language .12 .30** .31** .38** .06 1
7.Food .07 .16* .26* .15 �.02 .31** 1
8.Media .07 .15 .15 .18* �.03 .41** .37** 1
9.ETVAmt �.27** �.05 �.08 �.20* .10 .00 .02 �.00 1
10.General TVAmt �.18* �.00 �.00 �.09 �.06 .14 .07 �.06
.31** 1
Note.ETV Amt= the amount of educational television
programmes that children watched every day;
General TVAmt= the amount of general television viewing
every day.
*p< .05, **p< .01.
401–421 (2013)
DOI: 10.1002/icd
p= .08, between Asian and Hispanic parents. The assumption of
homogeneity of
variances was met for coviewing mediation but violated for
instructive and re-
strictive mediation. The Welch test (Welch, 1951) is an
alternative F test to be
used when the homogeneity of variances is violated, and it was
recommended
by Lix, Keselman, and Keselman (1996) that the Welch test
could be used in
most one-way analyses regardless of the equality of group sizes

and sample
size. Therefore, the Welch test was conducted, and the results of
instructive me-
diation and restrictive mediation were F(1, 135)= .14, p= .71
and F(1, 131)=3.28,
p= .07, respectively. However, there were no significant
differences between the
Asian and Hispanic groups in instructive and restrictive
mediation frequencies.
With regard to the group differences in parental acculturation
aspects, the as-
sumption of homogeneity of variances was violated. Instead, the
Welch test (1951)
was conducted for the three aspects of parental acculturation
(i.e. language,
food and media) between the Asian and Hispanic groups. The
results were
F(1, 140)=1.62, p= .21 for language, F(1, 138)=2.70, p= .10 for
food and F(1, 149)=1.63,
p= .20 for media (Table 2), which show that there were no
differences between Asian
and Hispanic parents in the three aspects of parental
acculturation.
Overall Relations: Path Analysis
Given the few differences found between Asian and Hispanic
families, the
subgroups were combined for the overall model analysis. The
fourth research ques-
tion (RQ4), investigating the overall relations among parental
education and occupa-
tion, parental mediation, parental acculturation and children’s
viewing, was analysed by path analysis. Path analysis is the

estimation of expected
causal relations among observed variables (Kline, 2005). The
fully saturated model
with all possible pathways between variables was first tested
(Model 1; Table 4).
Because all the variables were multivariate normal, the
maximum likelihood estima-
tionmethodwas used to analyseModel 1. On the basis ofModel 1,
the significance of
paths and the modification index were checked. Modification
index values suggest
that adding any of the parameters listed in the output will
reduce the model chi-
square by at least 3.84. Nonsignificant paths (a> .05) were
removed or fixed to zero
one group by one group from large to small in order to achieve
a parsimonious
model (simple and good fit). Eight models were tested, and
some necessary modifi-
cations were made. The chi-square and model fit indices for
these models are
provided in Table 4.
A stepwise comparison procedure was used to select the final
model. The chi-
square difference test was used to evaluate the relative fit of
two nested models
(i.e. Models 7 and 8). The results indicated that the chi-square
difference test was
significant (Δw2 [1] = 4.38> w2critical value [1] = 3.84, a=
.05), which suggests that
Model 8 fits significantly better than Model 7. On the basis of
the stepwise model
comparison procedure, as well as the chi-square difference test,
Model 8 (see
Figure 1 for standardized parameters) was selected as the final

model. The results
suggested that parental education and restrictive mediation
significantly,
negatively, predicted the amount of children’s educational
television viewing and
that language in parental acculturation positively predicted
instructive and restric-
tive mediation. In addition, parental education was positively
related to parental
occupation. Given its negligible bivariate relation with
educational television view-
ing, the significant pathway between occupation and the
outcome is likely the
result of its suppressor role in the model and should not
necessarily be interpreted
(Maassen & Bakker, 2001).
401–421 (2013)
DOI: 10.1002/icd
Ta
bl
e
4.
R
es
ul
ts
fr

om
a
st
ep
w
is
e
m
od
el
co
m
pa
ri
so
n
of
in
fl
ue
nc
es
on
ch
ild
re
n’
s

ed
uc
at
io
na
lt
el
ev
is
io
n
vi
ew
in
g
M
od
el
s
w2
df
C
FI
T
L
I

R
M
SE
A
SR
M
R
M
od
el
1:
Fu
lly
sa
tu
ra
te
d
m
od
el
.0
0
0
1.
00
1.

00
.0
0
.0
0
M
od
el
2:
R
em
ov
ed
fo
ur
no
ns
ig
ni
fi
ca
nt
pa
th
s,
E
d

uc
at
io
n
➔
M
ed
ia
,
M
ed
ia
➔
R
es
tr
ic
ti
ve
,
Fo
od
➔
C
ov
ie

w
in
g,
an
d
Fo
od
➔
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T
V
A
m
t
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1
4
1.
00
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od

el
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d
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n
➔
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od

,
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od
➔
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es
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➔
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ov
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w
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st
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ed
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➔
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t
1.
34
10
1.
00
1.
12
.0
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1
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od
el
4:
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em
ov
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fo
ur
no

ns
ig
ni
fi
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pa
th
s,
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ed
ia
➔
In
st
ru
ct
iv
e,
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d
uc
at
io
n
➔
In
st
ru
ct

iv
e,
O
cc
up
at
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➔
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66
14
1.
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1.
12
.0
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O
cc
up
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n
➔
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,
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cc
up
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➔
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es
tr
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,
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an
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e
➔
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ov
ie
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in
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ie
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t

7.
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1.
00
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08
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od
el
6:
R
em
ov
ed
tw
o
no
ns
ig
ni
fi

ca
nt
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th
s,
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d
uc
at
io
n
➔
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an
gu
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➔
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od

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on
e
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ni
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th
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tr
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00
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od
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d
d
a
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ri
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ce
be
tw
ee
n
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d
uc
at
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n
an

d
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es
tr
ic
ti
ve
11
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2
20
1.
00
1.
05
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0
.0
4
N
ot
e.
E
T
V
A
m
t=

th
e
am
ou
nt
of
ed
uc
at
io
na
l
te
le
vi
si
on
pr
og
ra
m
m
es
th
at
ch
ild

re
n
w
at
ch
ed
ev
er
y
d
ay
;
C
FI
=
co
m
pa
ra
ti
ve
fi
t
in
d
ex
;

T
L
I=
Tu
ck
er
–L
ew
is
in
d
ex
;
R
M
SE
A
=
ro
ot
m
ea
n
sq
ua
re
er
ro
r

of
ap
pr
ox
im
at
io
n;
SR
M
R
=
st
an
d
ar
d
iz
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ro
ot
m
ea
n
sq
ua
re
re
si

d
ua
l.
401–421 (2013)
DOI: 10.1002/icd
The results of the overall model demonstrated that one aspect of
parental
mediation, restrictive mediation had significant correlations
with both language in
parental acculturation and educational television viewing by
children. There were
also indirect effects from parental occupation to educational
television viewing
amount (i.e. occupation➔ language➔ restrictive mediation➔
viewing amount; Table 5). In other words, parental occupation,
rather than parental
education, is more likely to affect parental acculturation
(language), and this effect
may continue to influence parental mediation patterns
(restrictive mediation).
Restrictive mediation may then affect children’s educational
television viewing
amount negatively.
DISCUSSION
This present study explored whether there were significant

differences among
immigrant families between Asian and Hispanic parents of
young children in pa-
rental mediation, parental acculturation and their children’s
educational
programme viewing, as well as the relations among these three
concepts (Figure 1).
The key findings of the present study included first, Hispanic
children watched
significantly more television overall and specifically more
than did Asian children, and second, Hispanic parents
significantly enacted more
coviewing mediation behaviours than did Asian parents. Third,
language in
parental acculturation significantly predicted instructive and
restrictive parental
mediation. Fourth, parental occupation significantly predicted
language in paren-
tal acculturation.
On average, children watched television 3.50 hours per day,
which is consistent
with a national survey finding that 43% of the children watched
television for at
Figure 1. Final pathmodel with standardized parameters (Model
8). Edu=Education; Occu=
Occupation; Lang=Language; Instr = Instructive mediation;
Restr =Restrictive mediation;
Coview=Coviewingmediation; ETVAmt= the amount of
educational television programmes
that children watched every day; PA=parental acculturation;
PM=parental mediation.
*p< .01, **p< .001.

401–421 (2013)
DOI: 10.1002/icd
Ta
bl
e
5.
St
an
d
ar
d
iz
ed
d
ir
ec
t,
in
d
ir
ec
t
an
d
to
ta

le
ff
ec
ts
of
th
e
fi
na
lm
od
el
(M
od
el
8)
D
ep
en
d
en
t
va
ri
ab

le
s
In
d
ep
en
d
en
t
va
ri
ab
le
s
L
an
gu
ag
e
In
st
ru
ct
iv
e
R
es

tr
ic
ti
ve
E
T
V
A
m
t
D
ir
ec
t
In
d
ir
ec
t
To
ta
l
D
ir
ec
t
In
d
ir
ec

t
To
ta
l
D
ir
ec
t
In
d
ir
ec
t
To
ta
l
D
ir
ec
t
In
d
ir
ec
t
To
ta
l

E
d
uc
at
io
n
�.
37
2*
*
�.
37
2*
*
O
cc
up
at
io
n
.2
78
**
.2
78
**
.1
05

*
.1
05
*
.2
09
*
�.
01
8
.1
92
*
L
an
gu
ag
e
.2
20
*
.2
20
*
.3
77
**

.3
77
**
�.
06
3*
�.
06
3*
Fo
od
.1
72
*
.1
72
*
R
es
tr
ic
ti
ve
�.
16
8*
�.

16
8*
N
ot
e.
E
T
V
A
m
t,
th
e
am
ou
nt
of
ed
uc
at
io
na
lt
el
ev
is
io
n
pr
og

ra
m
m
es
th
at
ch
ild
re
n
w
at
ch
ed
ev
er
y
d
ay
.
*p
<
.0
5,
**
p
<
.0

01
401–421 (2013)
DOI: 10.1002/icd
least 2 hours in a typical day (Rideout & Hamel, 2006).
Children in Asian immi-
grant families spend significantly less time watching PBS shows
than children in
Hispanic immigrant families. There are two possible
explanations for this finding.
First, the demographic statistics in the sample showed that on
average, Asian
families reported a higher average parental educational level
than did the
Hispanic families, and parental education has previously (and in
the present study)
been found to be negatively related to overall television viewing
(Linebarger,
2010). Children of parents with low levels of education
typically watch more tele-
vision programmes in general, and the overall television
viewing amount seems to
drive the educational television programmes viewing amount
(Phillips & Lonigan,
2009). In accordance with this explanation, education was
negatively related to
educational television viewing within this sample. Second, more
Hispanic parents
reported engaging in coviewing mediation of television viewing
than did Asian

parents. The findings provide additional support for previous
research (Bryant &
Bryant, 2001) that children whose parents coviewed television
with them would
watch more television compared with children watching alone.
The results showed significant differences between Asian and
Hispanic groups
in coviewing mediation but not in instructive and restrictive
mediations. Hispanic
parents reported that their most frequent mediation type was
coviewing media-
tion. Parental education was significantly, negatively, related to
coviewing media-
tion (Warren, 2005), and Hispanic parents in this sample
reported a lower parental
education than Asian parents; thus, they might engage in more
coviewing media-
tion than the Asian parents. With regard to restrictive
mediation, the result
contrasted with that for coviewing mediation. Asian parents
reported more restric-
tive mediation compared with Hispanic parents. This outcome
may stem from
findings that education is often highly emphasized in Asian
immigrant families
(Eng et al., 2008). Further, they tend to set rules to regulate
their children, and
children are expected to have unquestioning obedience to their
parents. Under this
kind of parenting, children might experience more restrictive
mediation of television
viewing (Buerkel-Rothfuss & Buerkel, 2001). Consequently, it
was not surprising to
see that Asian parents were more restrictive of children’s
television viewing than

Hispanic parents in this sample. Parents who frequently engage
in restrictive media-
tion may restrict the overall television viewing of children,
which may accordingly
reduce viewing amounts for educational television programmes.
In the present study, restrictive mediation was significantly
positively correlated
to instructive mediation, such that parents who tended to set
rules for their children
on watching television were more likely to ask questions and
guide children to think
during viewing. When these two mediation behaviours are
combined, known as
active parental mediation (Warren, 2003, 2005), it may
facilitate good outcomes for
the language development of children. However,
restrictivemediation is not necessar-
ily good or bad, and it may depend on how parents engage in the
communications
with their children. That is, it may be better that parents
regulate children’s viewing
time and content without hurting their feelings and motivations
to learn.
Prior studies by Warren (2003, 2005) indicated that parents’
attitudes towards
television were related to the parental mediation types. Parents’
attitudes towards
television significantly and positively predicted instructive and
restrictive media-
tions but not coviewing mediation (Warren, 2005). This finding
suggests that the
influences of the macrosystem and exosystem from
Bronfenbrenner’s model
decreased and the influences of the mesosystem (parents’

attitudes) increased. This
model, taking acculturation as an indicator of attitude, might
explain our results that
there were no significant differences in instructive and
restrictive mediation types
between Asian and Hispanic families.
401–421 (2013)
DOI: 10.1002/icd
Conceptually, although some indicators within each (e.g.
restrictive and
coviewing mediation) were not highly correlated, parental
acculturation and paren-
tal mediation could be treated as two overall constructs for the
purposes of this
discussion. Parental acculturation significantly predicted
parental mediation in some
aspects (Figure 1). Parents with a higher acculturation level
appear to be more likely
to enact active parental mediation behaviours, inwhich parents
are actively involved
with their children by talking, explaining, asking questions and
setting rules. High
levels of acculturation include both integrated and assimilated
acculturation
patterns. Because the proportion of immigrants categorized as
assimilated was very
small, most of the participants were considered tomatch the
integrated acculturation
pattern. These participants may have high English proficiency,

high frequency of
English use, high frequency of American media use and high
motivation to use
media to learn American culture.
A study by Ying and Han (2008) indicated that parental
acculturation, especially
language acculturation (higher English language proficiency),
significantly predicted
active parental involvement at school and home (e.g. parents’
interactions with
teachers, parents helping children complete homework and
parents readingwith chil-
dren). A parallel could be drawn from this earlier study,
because parental mediation is
also a parental involvement behaviour related to children’s
television viewing. From
this perspective, the results that parental acculturation
significantly predicted parental
mediation are in line with the previous research.
Nonactive parentalmediation includes coviewingmediation,
inwhich parents are
just physically present to watch television together with their
children and do not
necessarily create educational occasions or have linguistic
interactions with their
children. Coviewing mediation was negatively correlated with
parental education.
It is likely that parents in this kind of mediation may just take it
for granted that
children could acquire literacy knowledge from educational
television automatically,
but ignore or not be aware of the parental role of guiding
children to think and
enhancing children’s learning outcomes through language

interactions while
watching. In addition, some parents from lower-SES families,
whomay have towork
two or three jobs to support families, may have no time or
energy to be actively in-
volved with children’s television viewing (i.e. instructive and
restrictive mediations).
Among the SES predictors, only parental occupation was
positively predictive of
parental acculturation. Immigrant professionals (i.e. thosewith a
higher occupational
coding) seem to be more likely than parents with blue collar
positions (e.g. manual
laborers) to be exposed to the whole American community
rather than only their
own ethnic community, and they may have more opportunities
to interact with the
American community. These opportunities may in turn provide
parents with
increased English proficiency and motivation to speak in this
language.
The assimilation rates, in contrast to integrated or separated
patterns, were very
low for both Asian and Hispanic parents, although both
subgroups reported a pro-
portion of second-generation parents. In past decades,
immigrants disproportionally
concentrated in several metropolitan locations such as Los
Angeles, San Francisco,
New York, Miami and Chicago, and these concentrations
provided a variety of large
immigrant communities in these metropolitan areas (i.e. the
Mexican community in
Los Angeles, Cuban community in Miami and Chinese

community in San Francisco
and New York; Portes & Rumbaut, 2006). Immigrants may have
less pressure and
motivation to give up their own cultures while still living in
their native cultural
community (e.g. China town, East LA and Little Italy) within
the new country (Fix
et al., 2001; Portes & Rumbaut, 2006). It is likely that these
individuals have just
selectively adapted to American society. Perhaps, this is the
reason that the majority
of Asian and Hispanic immigrants in this sample adopted the
strategy of integrated
401–421 (2013)
DOI: 10.1002/icd
acculturation, which is selectively learning the American
culture while maintaining
the native one. Future research should target larger proportions
of second-
generation and third-generation immigrant families to learn
whether these accultur-
ation patterns replicate.
Limitations
The primary limitation of this studywas that the sample sizewas
not large, as well as
convenience sampling; thus, the results of this studymay not
fully generalize to other

populations. As the sample was ascertained through
participation in community
centres and child care centres, it is not possible to determine its
full representative-
ness of the eligible immigrant population of families with young
children. We
provided potential participants in multiple states with the
opportunity to respond
either via paper or via electronic survey and provided the
survey in multiple lan-
guages to increase the generalizability. Moreover, the findings
of electronic surveys
have been found to be consistent with traditional data collection
and can be general-
ized to a larger population (Boyer, Olson, Calantone, &
Jackson, 2002; Gosling,
Vazire, Srivastava, & John, 2004; Kim et al., 2007; Shannon &
Bradshaw, 2002). In
further investigations, the goal is to increase the robustness of
the path models with
larger, ideally nationally representative samples.
A second limitation relates to the item investigating income,
which only asked
parents to mark a range of family annual income, did not allow
finer grain differen-
tiations between groups, although it likely increased
respondents’ comfort with
providing this type of sensitive material. It should also be noted
that despite the
experience and qualifications of some recent immigrants, they
are more likely to
‘enter at the bottom of their respective occupational ladders’
(Portes & Rumbaut,
2006, p. 58). For instance, immigrant professionals such as
engineers and doctors

often accept less desirable entry jobs within their professions or
even outside them;
immigrant manual workers, or illegal manual workers, have to
accept the most
arduous jobs with the lowest pay. Likewise, immigrant
entrepreneurs often start
small shops in the inner city, serving their own ethnic
community (Portes &
Rumbaut, 2006). Thus, although in general, parental education
was positively
related to parental occupation in the final model, their relation
may need to be
carefully scrutinized because of this possible underemployment
issue. Given that
immigrant parents who come as graduate students to the U.S.
may be low-
income families and other newly arrived immigrants may be
underemployed,
the validity of the measures of income and occupation as
indicators of other
behaviours may have been threatened. Third, because of the
difficulties of
conducting assessments with children in 17 states across the
U.S., language out-
comes of the children were not measured. On the basis of the
limitations, the
direction of the extended research is towards increasing the
sample size and
the accuracy of family SES measurement. Also, an experimental
design study
might illuminate the effects of different types of mediation
behaviours of educa-
tional television programme viewing on the language outcomes
of children in
immigrant families. Parenting variables (e.g. parenting style)
and cultural factors

(e.g. parental language use and values such as familism) might
also be considered
in future research. For example, immigrant families may watch
non-English
language channels such as those broadcasting in Spanish and
Chinese, a topic that
is worth exploring in future research. Also important for future
study would be
investigation of the popularity of native-language children’s
videos and websites
among immigrant families.
401–421 (2013)
DOI: 10.1002/icd
Conclusion
In conclusion, as addressed in the literature review, educational
television viewing
could help the language and literacy development for children
from at-risk back-
grounds. Accordingly, two conclusions of educational
implications could be drawn.
First, it would be helpful if parents from varying cultural
backgrounds could enact
active parental mediation behaviours (instructive and
restrictive)while their children
watch educational television. Active parental mediation
behaviours mean that
parents intentionally ask questions during viewing, guide
children to think, regulate

the viewing amount/content and always preview programmes.
Second, the results
suggests that parents are comfortable with exposing their
children to educational
television andmay also be comfortable with using educational
television as a supple-
mentary tool for teaching and learning in classrooms under the
circumstances of
careful previewing by researchers and teachers. Some studies
already showed that
educational television used in the classroom improved the
literacy development of
children from at-risk backgrounds (Phillips & Zhao, 2011;
Uchikoshi, 2005, 2006).
Few research studies existed to investigate the Asian and
Hispanic group differences
in educational television programmes viewing by children,
parental mediation and
parental acculturation, as well as the relations among these
three variables. To the
best of our knowledge, the present study serves as an initial
exploration into the topic
of educational television viewing of children in immigrant
families, and it awaits
replication from other studies on immigrants. Owing to the
rapid increase of the
Asian andHispanic immigrant population, the present
studywarrants further inves-
tigations in the future.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We are grateful to Pam Burris, Galiya Tabulda, Kayla Sedgwick
and Smriti Jangra
for their comments on the article. The valuable suggestions
from Alysia Roehrig,

Barbara Foorman and Yanyun Yang are also appreciated.
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