Validity and Reliability Study of Parental Mediation for Internet Usage Scale Adolescent and Parent Forms in the Turkish Sample

Abstract

Parental mediation includes parents’ attitudes and behaviors about their child’s media using. Early parental mediation researches have been conducted on television. Nowadays, parental mediation researches concentrate on the Internet. The main purpose of this study is to develop assessment forms that evaluate parental mediation strategies in respect of Internet Usage. In this study, a scale has been developed including parent and adolescent forms, as the strategies used by parents could be examined based on both parents and their children’s self-report. A representative sample consisting of a total of 728 parents participated in the parent form study in Mamak, Ankara (mother n=456; father n=272). A total of 718 adolescents (female n=371; male n=345) aged 11- 14 years old studying 6.-8. grades in a secondary school in Mamak participated in the adolescent form study. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and conformity factor analysis (CFA) were applied for the purpose of testing construct validity of the forms. EFA indicated that a two-factor model had enough fit for parent form and a three-factor model was suggested for adolescent form. Factors of parent form were named as “control/ restriction” and “active mediation”, factors of adolescent form were named as “control/ restriction”, “active mediation” and “monitoring”. These factors have explained 63.7% and 61.7% variance on parent and adolescent scales, respectively. The results of CFA have revealed appropriateness of the factor structure (Parent form: χ²/sd=2.08, RMSEA= .06, GFI: .91, AGFI: .88, SRMR: .03, NFI: .98, NNFI:.99, CFI:.99; Adolescent form: χ²/sd=2.94, RMSEA= .07, GFI: .88, AGFI: .84, SRMR: .04, NFI: .98, NNFI:.98, CFI:.99). Assessed with Cronbach Alfa internal consistency reliabilities were calculated as .95 for both parent and adolescent forms. Test-retest reliabilities were .87 and .82 for parent and adolescent forms, respectively. These results have pointed out that both forms have the value of use in research on the evaluation of parental mediation on the Internet usage.