The importance of the home environment for children’s emergent literacy development has systematically been examined (Burgess, Hecht & Lonigan, 2002), showing in particular that parent–child joint engagement in literacy activities at home enables children’s language development. Simultaneously parents’ beliefs on own child’s literacy development and how these affect other aspects of home literacy environment are explored to a lesser extent. Nevertheless some studies contribute to the stand that parents’ literacy beliefs considerably influence both learning environment and outcomes of learning at home (e.g. Curenton & Justice, 2008). Parent Reading Belief Inventory - PRBI (DeBaryshe & Binder, 1994; DeBaryshe, 1995) was developed to examine parents’ beliefs about reading aloud to their children, measuring parents’ attitudes and perceptions about how children learn, the content of their learning and perceptions of parental efficacy in the process. The PRBI is assumed to be comprised of 7 underlying subscales and a total score. In several studies PRBI’s total score was used to examine the link between parental beliefs and child’s literacy outcomes (e.g. Weigel, Martin & Bennett, 2006), but so far only in one study fit of the proposed 7 factor structure was actually tested (e.g. Gonzalez, Taylor, Davis & Kim, 2013). Examination of the PRBI’s core factor structure, when inspected for Serbian language (N=227 parents), showed that internal consistency estimates are not in line with those originally proposed by DeBaryshe and Binder (Radišić & Ševa, 2013). When modelled using confirmatory factor analysis, the subscale models showed considerable variance in how well they fit. Better fit was found for the overall models for the entire PRBI scale, among which the correlated factors model exhibited the best fit indices (χ2(797) =1553.888, p<.000, CMIN/df=1.950, CFI=0.582, RMSEA=0.065). Lower CFI value point to differences with respect to overlap between predicted and obtained data, particularly in the segment of parents’ beliefs regarding their perception of own teaching efficacy. These results, along with data gathered in three consecutive focus groups with parents of children age 3 to 5 on their beliefs and particular practices related to emergent literacy, served as a basis for the revision of the PRBI in the Serbian context. Particular emphasis was put on those sections of the scale that relate to parents’ beliefs of own teaching efficacy and expectations from the kindergarten and school with respect to literacy development. Outcomes of this analysis will be discussed in the light of previous cross-linguistic results.

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