Both ethnography and experience-sampling methods (ESMs) are effective for assessing children's home activities. The authors combined them to examine home activities that were school-like, complementary to school, or unrelated to school. The activities were then related to children's school achievement in a sample of low-income Latino immigrant families and their tento eleven-year-old children at risk for low school achievement. Children reported a wide variety of types of activities in their evening routines. Children with higher school achievement were engaged in chores; homework; monitored outside activities; family social activities and hobbies; and self-directed, goal-oriented activities. Children with lower levels of school achievement tended to be engaged in more television, video games, peer and solitary play, and resting. ESMs are a valuable and effective complement to ethnographic and school achievement data in the study of home activities and home-school relationships.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Azmitia, M.
, C. Cooper, E. Garcia, A. Ittel, B. Johanson, E. Lopez, R. Martinez-Chavez, and R. Rivera. 1994. Links between home and school among low-income Mexican-American and European-American families. Santa Cruz, CA: National Center for Research on Cultural Diversity and Second Language Learning.
2.
Bergin, D. A.1992. Leisure activity, motivation, and academic achievement in high school students. Journal of Leisure Research24:225–239.
3.
Bernard, H. R.
, and P. D. Killworth. 1993. Sampling in time allocation research. Ethnology32:207–215.
4.
Bernard, H.
, P. D. Killworth, D. Kronenfeld, and L. Sailer. 1984. The problem of informant accuracy: The validity of retrospective data. Annual Review of Anthropology13:495–517.
5.
Chang, H.1992. Adolescent life and ethos: An ethnography of a US high school. London: Falmer.
Christenson, S. L.
, T. Rounds, and D. Gorney. 1992. Family factors and student achievement: An avenue to increase students' success. School Psychology7:178–206.
8.
Clark, R. M.1983. Family life and school achievement. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
9.
Cooper, C. R.
, and J. Denner. 1998. Theories linking culture and psychology: Universal and community-specific processes. Annual Review of Psychology49:559–584.
10.
Cornelius, W.1989–90. Mexican immigrants in California today. ISSR Working Papers in the Social Sciences5 (10): 2–46.
11.
Csikszentmihalyi, M.
, and R. Larson. 1987. Validity and reliability of the experience-sampling method. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease175:526–536.
12.
Csikszentmihalyi, M.
, K. Rathunde, and S. Whalen. 1993. Talented teenagers: The roots of success and failure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
13.
Datcher-Loury, L.1987. Family background and school achievement among low income blacks. Journal of Human Resources24:528–544.
14.
Delgado-Gaitan, C.1987. Traditions and transitions in the learning process of Mexican children: An ethnographic view. In Interpretive ethnography of education at home and abroad, edited by G. Spindler and L. Spindler, 333–362. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
15.
Delgado-Gaitan, C.1992. School matters in the Mexican-American home: Socializing children to education. American Educational Research Journal29:495–513.
16.
Deutscher, I.1973. What we say/what we do: Sentiments and acts. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman.
17.
Flinn, M.1988a. Mate guarding in a Caribbean village. Ethology and Sociobiology9:1–28.
18.
Flinn, M.1988b. Step- and genetic parent/offspring relationships in a Caribbean village. Ethology and Sociobiology9:335–369.
19.
Furstenberg, F.
, T. Cook, J. Eccles, G. Elder, and A. Sameroff. 1999. Managing to make it: Urban families and adolescent success. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
20.
Gallimore, R.
, S. Boggs, and C. Jordan. 1974. Culture, behavior, and education. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
21.
Gallimore, R.
, and C. Goldenberg. 1993. Activity settings of early literacy: Home and school factors in children's emergent literacy. In Contexts for learning: Sociocultural dynamics in children's development, edited by E. A. Forman, N. Minick, and C. A. Stone, 315–335. New York: Oxford University Press.
22.
Gallimore, R.
, and L. Reese. 1999. Mexican immigrants in urban California: Forging adaptations from families and new cultural sources. In Culture, ethnicity, and migration, edited by M. C. Foblets and C. L. Pang, 245–263. Leuven, Belgium: ACCO.
23.
Gibson, M. A.1997. Exploring and explaining the variability: Cross-national perspectives on the school performance of minority students. Anthropology and Education Quarterly28:318–329.
24.
Goldenberg, C. N.
, and R. Gallimore. 1995. Immigrant Latino parents' values and beliefs about their children's education: Continuities and discontinuities across cultures and generations. In Advances in motivation and achievement, vol. 9, edited by P. Pintrich and M. Maehr, 183–227. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
25.
Goldenberg, C. N.
, R. Gallimore, L. J. Reese, and H. Garnier. Forthcoming. Cause or effect? A longitudinal study of immigrant Latinos' educational aspirations and expectations and their children's school performance. American Educational Research Journal.
26.
Greenacre, M.1984. Theory and application of correspondence analysis. London: Harcourt Brace.
27.
Greenacre, M.
, and J. Blasius. 1994. Correspondence analysis in the social sciences. London: Harcourt Brace.
28.
Gross, D. R.1984. Time allocation: A tool for the study of cultural behavior. Annual Reviews in Anthropology13:519–558.
29.
Harré, R.
, and P. F. Secord. 1972. The explanation of social behavior. Oxford: Blackwell.
30.
Heath, S. B.1983. Ways with words: Language, life, and work in communities and classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
31.
Hofferth, S. L.1998. Children's time. Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for Social Research.
32.
Hofferth, S. L., and J. Sandberg. 1998. Changes in American children's time, 1981–1997. Research report, Institute for Social Research and Population Studies Center, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
33.
Hormuth, S. E.1986. The sampling of experiences in situ. Journal of Personality54:262–293.
34.
Johnson, A.1975. Time allocation in a Machiguenga community. Ethnology14:310–321.
35.
Johnson, A.1996. Time allocation. In Encyclopedia of cultural anthropology, edited by D. Levinson and M. Ember, 1313–1316. New York: Henry Holt.
36.
Krippendorf, K.1980. Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
37.
Kroesen, K.
, L. Reese, and R. Gallimore. 1998. Navigating multiple worlds: Latino children becoming adolescents in Los Angeles. Selected papers on refugees and immigrants, vol. 6. Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association.
38.
Marjoribanks, K.1996. Family learning environments and students' outcomes: A review. Journal of Comparative Family Studies27:373–394.
39.
McNabb, S. L.1990. The uses of “inaccurate” data: A methodological critique and applications of Alaska native data. American Anthropologist92:116–129.
40.
Mitchell, S. K.1979. Interobserver agreement, reliability, and generalizability of data collected in observational studies. Psychological Bulletin86:376–390.
41.
Munroe, R. H.
, and R. L. Munroe. 1971. Household density and infant care in an East African society. Journal of Social Psychology83:3–13.
42.
Reese, L.
, S. Balzano, R. Gallimore, and C. N. Goldenberg. 1995. The concept of educación: Latino family values and American schooling. International Journal of Educational Research23 (1): 57–81.
43.
Reese, L.
, and R. Gallimore. Forthcoming. Immigrant Latino's cultural model of literacy development: An alternative perspective on home-school discontinuities. American Journal of Education.
44.
Reese, L.
, C. N. Goldenberg, J. Loucky, and R. Gallimore. 1995. Ecocultural context, cultural activity, and emergent literacy of Spanish-speaking children. In Class, culture and race in American schools: A handbook, edited by S. W. Rothstein, 199–224. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
45.
Reese, L.
, K. Kroesen, and R. Gallimore. 2000. Agency and school performance among urban Latino youth. In Resilience across contexts: Family, work, culture and community, edited by R. Taylor and M. Wang, 295–332. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
46.
Roberts, C. W.1997. A theoretical map for selecting among text analysis methods. In Text analysis for the social sciences: Methods for drawing statistical inferences from texts and transcripts, edited by C. W. Roberts, 275–283. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
47.
Rogoff, B.1978. Spot observation: An introduction and examination. Quarterly Newsletter of the Institute for Comparative Human Development, Rockefeller University2:21–26.
48.
Romney, A. K.
, and S. C. Weller. 1984. Predicting informant accuracy from patterns of recall among individuals. Social Networks4:59–77.
49.
Soto, L. D.1988. The home environment of higher and lower achieving Puerto Rican children. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences10:161–167.
50.
Suárez-Orozco, C. M.
, and M. Suárez-Orozco. 1995. Transformations: Immigration, family life, and achievement among Latino adolescents. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
51.
Szalai, A.1972. The use of time. The Hague: Mouton.
52.
Taylor, D.1983. Family literacy: Young children learning to read and write. Exeter, NH: Heinemann.
53.
Teale, W. H.1986. Home background and young children's literacy development. In Emergent literacy, edited by W. H. Teale and E. Sulzby, 173–206. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
54.
Volk, D.1997. Questions in lessons: Activity settings in the homes and school of two Puerto Rican kindergartners. Anthropology and Education Quarterly28 (1): 22–49.
55.
Wang, M. C.
, G. D. Haertel, and H. J. Walberg. 1993. Toward a knowledge base for school learning. Review of Educational Research63:249–294.
56.
Watts, D. D.1997. Correspondence analysis—A graphical technique for examining categorical data. Nursing Research46:235–239.
57.
Weber, R.1990. Basic content analysis. 2d ed.Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
58.
Wegner, D.
, and R. R. Vallacher. 1977. Implicit psychology: An introduction to social cognition. New York: Oxford University Press.
59.
Weinberger, J.1996. A longitudinal study of children's early literacy experiences at home and later literacy development at home and school. Journal of Research in Reading19:14–24.
60.
Weisner, T. S.1996. The 5 to 7 transition as an ecocultural project. In The five to seven year shift: The age of reason and responsibility, edited by A. Sameroff and M. Haith, 295–326. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
61.
Weisner, T. S.
, R. Gallimore, and C. Jordan. 1988. Unpackaging cultural effects on classroom learning: Hawaiian peer assistance and child-generated activity. Anthropology and Education Quarterly19:327–353.
62.
Weisner, T. S.
, R. Gallimore, and R. Tharp. 1982. Concordance between ethnographer and folk perspectives: Observed performance and self-ascription of sibling caretaking roles. Human Organization41:237–244.
63.
Weller, S. C.
, and A. K. Romney. 1990. Metric scaling: Correspondence analysis. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
64.
Whiting, B.
, and C. Edwards. 1988. Children of different worlds: The formation of social behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
