Assessing Childrearing Attitudes: Validation of a Shortened Version of the Parenting Questionnaire

Abstract

SYNOPSISObjective. This study investigated the feasibility and validity of the parenting questionnaire, a measure designed to assess attitudes toward acceptable and unacceptable parenting practices in parents of young children. In addition, the study aimed to reduce the number of items in the parenting questionnaire to increase the utility of the measure. Design. Participants were ethnically diverse parents (N = 420) of children between the ages of 2 and 6 living in an urban, Midwestern city. Both principal components analysis and principal axis factoring were conducted to reduce redundant items and to examine the factor structure of the questionnaire. Correlations between the parenting questionnaire factors and independent scales of constructs similar to the parenting questionnaire factors were examined to assess convergent and discriminant validity. Results. The shortened (30-item) parenting questionnaire accounted for a moderate amount of total variance, retained the same factor structure as the longer measure, and demonstrated adequate internal reliability. Validity findings show a pattern of correlations between independent scales and parenting questionnaire factors consistent with hypothesized expectations. Conclusions. The shortened parenting questionnaire is a valid and feasible measure for assessing childrearing attitudes in parents of young children. The findings provide support for the parenting questionnaire’s potential to fill a void in attitude assessment methodology by contributing a vignette-based attitudinal measure that assesses both positive and negative parenting constructs.