Developing a Tool for Assessing Perceived Parental Socialization of Emotions in Adolescents and Young Adults

TL;DR

This paper develops a tool to measure how adolescents and young adults perceive their parents' emotional socialization practices.

Contribution

The novel contribution is the creation and validation of a comprehensive scale for perceived parental socialization of emotion.

Findings

The tool was reduced from 160 to 46 items through validation and factor analysis.

The final tool showed strong internal consistency with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.88.

Three key domains—Awareness, Acceptance, and Coaching—were identified as central to the construct.

Abstract

Introduction: Parenting practices have been described as the practices employed by a parent and the parent-child communication, with the focus on raising a child in the best possible manner while instilling cultural, ethical, and personal values. One similar yet different construct that holds significance in the development of a child is parental socialization of emotion. Parental socialization of emotion is the interaction between the parents and child regarding the emotional experience of the child. This has been considered an essential marker of the development of the emotional and social competence of an individual. There are several scales in the aspect of parenting practices. However, scales for parental socialization of emotion especially considering the perception of adolescents and young adults have yet to fully be explored.

Methods: The aim of the study is to establish a comprehensive tool that enables the measurement of perceived parental socialization of emotion (PPSE). The process of tool construction, data collection, and analysis was done in five phases that included reviewing existing tools and identification of domains (Phase 1); generation of an item pool (Phase 2); content validity, face validity, and inter-rater reliability (Phase 3); finalization of the tool for data collection (Phase 4); and data collection and analysis (Phase 5). The study for tool construction included participants from ages 13-28 years representing adolescents and young adults from schools and colleges located in New Delhi, India, as well as Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, India. The research design used was a cross-sectional design, and the data were collected through purposive sampling, including males (N = 337) and females (N = 424). Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used to check the factorability and for item reduction.

Results: The results aided in reducing the number of items from 160 to 46 including the process of content validity, inter-rater reliability, item-total statistic, and factor loading of EFA. The factors above the eigenvalue of 3 were retained while items above the factor loading of 0.50 were taken into consideration. A good Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.88 for the overall tool was established, with 0.89, 0.84, and 0.87 for the domains Awareness, Acceptance, and Coaching, respectively.

Conclusion: The scale constructed includes both the positive and negative emotions of an individual and tries to understand the perspective of the receiver of the parenting practice. The study helps in understanding the phenomenon of PPSE, which might also aid in creating awareness regarding efficient parenting practices.