Measuring parenting adaptability : development and preliminary validation of parenting adaptability description – preschool

Abstract

Parenting adaptability, parental ability to fine-tune parenting behaviors to the child’s situation, is important for parent-child interaction and child development. Nevertheless, theoretically, it is still unclear how to assess parenting adaptability. Potentially, the Situational Parenting (SP) model, which emphasizes the match between parenting behaviors and children’s situations, can provide a theoretical basis for developing an assessment instrument to measure parenting adaptability. The study was conducted across three phrases. During phase I, based on the literature and interviews of 15 mothers of preschool children in Singapore, the author developed a draft of the Parenting Adaptability Description – Preschool questionnaire (PAD-P). During phase II, after the review of three experts and five mothers, 16 items with good face validity and content validity were kept as the final version of the PAD-P. During phase III, to assess the criterion-related validity, the finalized PAD-P was administered to a sample of 79 mothers of preschool children in Singapore, together with the Parenting Sense of Competence Scale (PSOC), a question measuring the mother and child relationship status, the Authoritativeness dimension of the Parenting Practice Questionnaire (PPQ), and Autonomy Q-sort. The results have shown that in addition to good face validity and content validity, the PAD-P also demonstrated good criterion-related validity. Mothers’ reports on the PAD-P were significantly correlated with their reports on the mother and child relationship status, overall PSOC, the parents’ Satisfaction subscale in the PSOC, the child’s Autonomy, and Authoritativeness parenting style. However, the PAD-P was not significantly correlated with the parents’ Efficacy subscale in the PSOC. These findings suggest that this newly developed PAD-P is a valid tool to measure parenting adaptability among preschool children’s parents. To our knowledge, this is the first instrument specially measuring preschool children’s parents’ parenting adaptability. This thesis’s major theoretical contribution is providing an assessment tool for further study and intervention on parenting adaptability. Its most significant practical contribution is providing practical frame for parents to choose parenting tools or parenting behaviors.