Relations of Parental Acculturation, Parental Mediation, and Children's Educational Television Program Viewing in Immigrant Families

It is suggested by researchers and educational experts that viewing educational television programs may be a good way to improve the language and literacy development for children, especially those in immigrant families. In an immigrant family, many family characteristics appear to be related to educational television program viewing of children at home, for example, parental acculturation (the process of adapting to the new culture) and parental mediation (supervision and guidance) of television viewing. In the present thesis work, the author reviewed some of these family characteristics and investigated how they interact with children's educational program viewing. This is a quantitative study, based on a sample (n = 171) of parents with children at 3-6 in immigrant families collected across the United States. The subsequent survey data analysis was conducted by utilizing one-way ANOVA and Structural Equation Modeling techniques. The key findings include: (1) Hispanic children watched significantly more educational television than Asian children; (2) there were significant differences between Asian and Hispanic groups in coviewing mediation, but not in instructive and restrictive mediation; (3) language in parental acculturation significantly predicted instructive and restrictive parental mediation of television viewing; (4) parental mediation was not a mediating variable between parental acculturation and children's educational television program viewing.