Construction and Validation of the Maternal Emotion Coaching Questionnaire

Abstract

Objectives The purpose of this study was to construct and validate a questionnaire to assess emotion coaching of mothers with school-age children in Korea. Methods A total of 573 mothers of children in the 1st~4th grade in elementary school in Seoul and Gyeonggi area participated in the study. Maternal emotion coaching, meta-emotion, and emotional intelligence were assessed by self-report. Data from sample 1 (n=349) were used to extract factors and items with exploratory factor analyses, and then data from sample 2 (n=244) were used to confirm factor structures with confirmatory factor analysis and estimate reliability statistics as well as validity coefficients. Results First, the Maternal Emotion Coaching Questionnaire (MECQ) consisted of 26 items with five factors including maternal awareness, guidance, attention, acceptance, and empathy. Second, the MECQ demonstrated adequate internal consistency, split-half reliability and retest reliabilty. Third, maternal emotion coaching was strongly related to maternal empathic acceptance and sensitivity of awareness as well as emotional intelligence, which supported the construct validity. Conclusions The results indicate that the MECQ is a valid and reliable scale to assess the level of maternal emotion coaching. The MECQ can be a useful tool in parent education to assess the strengths and weaknesses of specific components of maternal emotion coaching. Keywords: emotion coaching, emotion socialization, school-age child, emotion coaching questionnaire, mother-report