Parent Survey for Early Childhood Family Education

Abstract

The purpose of this project was to develop an improved program evaluation survey instrument to inform program performance in the Early Childhood Family Education (ECFE) program in the St. Louis County School District in Minnesota. The survey is completed by parents who participated in the ECFE program opportunities (classes, special events or home visits) and who met the participation threshold. The survey measures parents' perceptions about how well the ECFE program meets parents' needs, the reasons parents choose to participate in ECFE, to identify potential program expansion needs, and to identify program improvement areas. The process utilized to develop the survey instrument included gathering input from ECFE teaching staff, an ECFE parent, and regional ECFE administrators along with consulting an expert on evaluation from the University of Minnesota, Duluth. The survey tool was administered to a subset of parents to learn how the instrument performed given the desired outcomes.