New validity evidence of the Parent PARQ/Control scale of Parental Educational Styles.

BACKGROUND: The Parent PARQ/Control (short version) for mothers and fathers is an inventory of 29 items where parents record their acceptance-rejection and control behaviors towards their children. Despite vast research on IPARQTheory, it has yet to be vali-dated for a Spanish population. The goal of this study is to analyze the psychometric properties of the instrument and its factorial structure.

METHOD: Participants were 4,168 parents from the Principality of Asturias (2,166 mothers and 2,002 fathers). Mean age for mothers was 39.50 years and 41.90 years for fathers. Following preliminary studies, we carried out exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) for mothers and for fathers separately.

RESULTS: Analysis of mothers’ responses reveal an instrument comprising 15 items with a three factor-structure: warmth/affection, hostility/aggression and control. For fathers, the structure of the inventory gave a 23 item instrument with four factors: warmth/affection, hostility/aggression, indifference/neglect and control.

CONCLUSIONS: Overall, these results show that warmth/affection and control are the main dimensions in parental educational styles, and as hypothesized, mothers and fathers have different educational styles.