The Effect of Parent-Parent Social Capital on Children's Narrative Language
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Date
2018-05
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
Parents' social class is positively related to children's academic and long-term health outcomes. Research that examines this relationship typically indexes social class with a gradational measure, such as parent education or family income. This method of determining social class does not fully account for all the resources that a child relies upon to produce language. Therefore, this study employs a relational measure to index social class, called social capital. Social capital resides in relationships of trust and shared expectations among parents, between parents and school staff, and between parents and children. This study analyzes the relationship between parent-parent social capital and the narrative language of their school-age children. Parent-parent social capital was measured through parents (n = 43) answering a survey that assessed the size of a parent's social network as well as shared expectations and levels of reciprocity among other parents. Their children (n = 43) generated a spoken narrative from a 5-picture sequence. The microstructure of the narrative samples was analyzed for sentence structure (MLU) and vocabulary diversity (NDW). Results revealed no statistically significant relationship between parent-parent social capital and either measures of children's narrative language. Implications of these findings are explored.
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Keywords
social capital, school-age, narrative