Development of an instrument assessing parenting behaviors

A paper-and-pencil instrument measuring parenting behaviors in hypothetical child rearing Situations was developed, based on Maccoby and Martin’s (1983) fourfold classification of parenting typologies. Maccoby and Martin’s model was expanded and examined from a circumplex perspective; the dimension of warmth/hostility was separated into categories reflecting various degrees of warmth/hostility (over-protective, responsive, hostile, and rejecting). Likewise, the dimension of control was separated into categories reflecting various degrees of control (restrictive, guiding, permissive, and uninvolved).

The instrument developed, or the Parent Behaviors Instrument (PBI), consisted of 20 childrearing vignettes describing typical situations that parents of preschoolers might face, followed by four alternative actions that the parent might take in responding to the vignette. The four alternative actions corresponded to each of the four categories of the degrees of parental warmth/hostility and the four categories of the degrees of parental control discussed previously. The Parent Behaviors Instrument was administered to 59 subjects, who were predominantly white and middle class. Reliability and factor analysis were assessed for the instrument. Validity of the instrument was determined by comparing the results obtained on the instrument to the results obtained from administering Emmerich’s (1969) version of the Parent Attitudes Research Instrument (PARI) and to results obtained from in-home observations of parent-child interactions. Results indicated that the reliabilities of the warmth/hostility and control scales of the PBI and were moderate; reliabilities of the eight component subscales tended to be low. Only items belonging to subscales with higher reliabilities had consistent factor loadings. The PBI subscale designed to measure uninvolved parental behaviors was significantly related to the PARI’s authoritarian control scale score. The PBI subscales measuring responsive and guiding parental behaviors were Significantly related to the authoritative style of parenting, assessed through home observations.