The Development of Three Scales to Measure the Supportiveness of Relationships between Parents and Child Care Providers

Abstract

The Caregiver Support Appraisal Scale-V (CSA-V), the Caregiver Support Appraisal Scale-P (CSA-P), and the Caregiver Supportive Behavior Scale (CSB) are 9, 15, and 45 item scales, respectively, which were modeled after existing social support measures and were designed specifically to measure aspects of the supportive nature of parent-caregiver relationships, including parents' feelings of being supported and parents' identification of caregivers as supportive resources. The present article describes the development of the CSA-V, CSA-P, and CSB with a pilot group of 22 parents of preschoolers and a random sample of 96 parents of toddlers in various child care settings. Factor analyses provided evidence of construct validity; further evidence in the form of convergent and divergent validity correlations was obtained by contrasting caregiver support responses with responses on companion measures assessing social support from other sources. Scales and subscales were found to possess high alpha internal consistency and test-retest reliability over a 3-week period. Interview data obtained from extreme groups based on caregiver support scale responses further validated scores on the CSA-V, CSA-P, and CSB and resulted in four characterizations of the parent-caregiver relationship: custodial, business/professional, friend, and family.