Development and Validation of a Parent Belief and Preschoolers’ Attitudes Questionnaire on Supporting Chinese Preschoolers’ English as a Foreign Language Learning

The present study aimed to develop and validate a questionnaire assessing parents’ beliefs, the home literacy environment, and their support for young children’s Eng-lish as a second/foreign language development—the Parents’ Beliefs and Preschool-ers’ Attitudes toward English Learning Questionnaire (PBPAEL-Q). The PBPAEL-Q was initially piloted with 160 parents of kindergarten-aged children and subsequent-ly validated with a sample of 405 parents in mainland China. A series of exploratory factor analyses and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to explore the fac-tor structure and evaluate model fit, resulting in a 51-item questionnaire with three factors: (1) parents’ beliefs about the importance of early childhood English learning, (2) the English home literacy environment, and (3) preschoolers’ English learning attitudes. The convergent and divergent validity of the PBPAEL-Q were supported by examining its relationships with parents’ home practices and family characteristics. The PBPAEL-Q exhibited acceptable model fit indices and demonstrated good relia-bility and validity. The findings suggest that the PBPAEL-Q is a reliable and valid tool for measuring parents’ beliefs and the home literacy environment related to young children’s English as a second/foreign language development. It may also contribute to a deeper understanding of how parental beliefs influence home practices and chil-dren’s attitudes toward English language learning.