Intervention to change parent-child reading style: A comparison of instructional methods

Dialogic reading is an evidence-based intervention to promote the language skills of 2- and 3-year-old children. This study examined conditions under which dialogic reading could be implemented in a community setting. Three methods of instruction were compared: (a) in-person with video instruction in small groups, (b) self-instruction by video with telephone follow-up and, (c) self-instruction by video alone. Results showed few parents read with a dialogic style prior to instruction. Instruction yielded more than a 4-fold increase in parents' dialogic reading behaviors and had significant positive effects on children's language use (including number of words and mean length of utterances) during shared reading. When the data were stratified by parents' education and instructional method (in-person vs. self-instruction), there was a significant difference favoring in-person instruction as the more efficacious method of instruction, especially for parents with high school education.