A Validity Testing Study of Parent Attitude Scale (PAS) for the Parents Who Have Children Between 7 and 11

Abstract

As children's socialization changes, the areas on which parents' attitudes focus also change. Middle childhood (age 7-11 years) is a special developmental period in which children experience changes in their physical, cognitive, and socialization aspects. However, few studies have investigated parental attitudes toward middle childhood. There are various measurement tools for parental attitudes. In our country, these tools are generally used to measure authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive dimensions, but not the overprotective dimension, which is the subject of an increasing number of studies. In Turkish literature, the only scale used to evaluate the overprotective dimension in addition to the authoritative, authoritarian and permissive dimensions is the Parent Attitude Scale (PAS). In this study, we aimed to evaluate whether PAS is a psychometrically adequate scale to measure the parental attitudes toward middle childhood. A total of 392 participants (260 mothers, 121 fathers, and 11 participants of unspecified gender) were included. Results of the confirmatory factor analysis revealed that a four-dimensional structure consisting of 42 items encompassing the authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, and overprotective dimensions was supported. Meanwhile, the results of the interdimensional correlation analysis showed that authoritative-authoritarian was negatively correlated to authoritativepermissive, while permissive-authoritarian was positively correlated to permissive-overprotective; no significant relationship was found with overprotective-authoritative. The results of the formal, metric, and scale invariance tests showed the applicability of PAS to both parents. Cronbach's Alpha internal consistency coefficients, correlations between dimensions and test-retest results obtained within the scope of the reliability analysis also supported that the reliability level of the scale was at a desirable level. In conclusion, PAS is a valid and reliable scale applicable to parents with children aged 7-11 years.