Development and Validation of a Quantitative Measure for Chinese Sources of Parental Meaning

Abstract

Although parental meaning has been found to be a crucial dimension in examining parental cognitions and parental well-being, it has previously only been studied qualitatively. The goal of this research was to develop and validate a quantitative measure for the assessment of sources of parental meaning. Two samples of Hong Kong Chinese parents were recruited to fill out a questionnaire comprising items about different aspects and sources of parental meaning and several validation measures. An exploratory factor analysis on the first sample of 1557 parents yielded a fourfold factor structure with 22 items. A confirmatory factor analysis on the second sample of 352 parents demonstrated a good model fit. These factors revealed four categories of Chinese sources of parental meaning, including (1) the degree to which parents underline their positive personal development through childrearing (self-enhancement), (2) the degree to which parents emphasize the nurturing of their children’s psychosocial growth (child nurturing), (3) the degree to which parents affirm the social values of being parents (instrumental consideration), and (4) the degree to which parents attach importance to strengthening the couple relationship (marital relationship). The findings show that the components of the CSPMQ were associated in different directions with different measures of parental well-being. Some of the factors were able to discriminate between the clinical group and non-clinical group, as well as between the father group and mother group. The development of this scale can fill part of the knowledge gap and initiate future research directions.