Constructing of a Parenting Style Scale

Students from demographically comparable parameters were chosen from different colleges of T. M. Bhagalpur University, Bhagalpur, Bihar incidentally. The criteria for selection of the items followed the four styles of parenting introduced by Baumrind (1971). The medium of language was Hindi, for obvious reasons. The selected items adhered to the socio – cultural realities of the area of residence of the subjects. The scale was found to have good reliability and validity and hence suitable for use.


Introduction: -
Parenting means raising a child from birth to adulthood.In other words it is a practice which deals in promoting the physical, emotional, social and cognitive development of a child.Indian scholars have studied the process of socialization of the Indian child.However, on account of the rapidly changing scenario of attitude towards life by both parents and their child the parenting style is facing challenges all over the world, especially in India.Hence, this study was undertaken so that a Scale is developed (in Hindi) keeping in mind the challenges of parenting in India at the present times.Maccoby and Martin (1983) have clearly delineated two behaviours underlying the style adopted by parents for parenting their child parental demandingness and parental responsiveness.Thus, these two represent authoritarian (action and mindset) permissive, authoritative and negligent action and mindset.These were further dichotomized as high and low control and high and low permissiveness.Hence, accordingly items were framed in view of the aforementioned facts.

Concept of parenting style
The following Table (Table 1) will highlight the items for the construction and try out.Scales in use for parenting style Baumrind (1966) was perhaps the pioneer in constructing an authentic Scale of parenting style.Later, Lefebenere (2004) also came up with a Scale for the same in line with the conceptualization by Baumrind.Cravia et.al. ( 2008) made some alterations in the Scale developed by her.In India quite a few scholars have made efforts to develop Scales keeping in mind the sociocultural reality of our country.For example Usha and Manjhusha (2006) developed Parental Style Scale with a view to take into consideration the loop holes indicated in the Scales in India.The development of the present Scale is also aimed to further the cause authentically.

Scale Construction
This scale will be used for students of Intermediate classes.Hence, the theories of Baumrind (1971) and Maccoby and Martin (1983) will be the main sources of deciding the parameters to be used thus.

Method
As many as 830 students from the colleges of Bhagalpur were asked to give their responses so that the standardization and development of the Scale could be carried out.360 boys and 472 girls were the Subjects.

Development of the Scale
Item writing: -Evidently, the writing of items was based on the thesis of Baumrind (1973) and Maccoby and Martin (1983) albeit the social and cultural realities of Indian students were strictly observed and inculcated.So, the items measured the responsiveness and control by parents felt by their children.The item catered to the mindset of both fathers and mothers.All areas of interaction -personal, social and cultural were judiciously considered.
Scoring of items: -The scoring of items was based on 5point continuum ranging from "always true" to "almost true", "sometime true", "sometimes false", "almost false" and "always false".The scoring being 5 to 1. Fifty percent of the items were responsive items and the rest fifty percent control items.Firstly, the total score of control as well as responsiveness items were calculated separately.Thus, scores for each parent were calculated separately and the total of scores of each parents were taken for overall score of each item.Thus, the scale in preparation yielded six independent scores for every participantmother's responsiveness, father's responsiveness, mother's control, father's control, parental responsiveness and parental control.Hence, such parents were categorized as authoritative who scored high (above the median) on both control and responsiveness.Such parents were categorized as negligent who scored low in both control and responsiveness (below median).Indulgent parents were those who scored high in responsiveness but low in control.Lastly, parents scoring low in responsiveness and high in control were categorized as authoritative.Parenting style was consequently determined on the basis of these scores for each parent.

Item Analysis: -
Edwards (1969) has formulated a method for item analysis which was used for the present case.370 answer sheets were randomly selected and arranged in descending order (of scores) so that top 100 and top 100 bottom subjects could be selected (i.e.27% of the sample under study).For responsiveness and control item responses item analysis was conducted separately.'t' value of each item helped in item analysis.

Result: -
For the final Scale only those items were selected having a value of more than 2.58.Thus in the final version equal number of items (19 in each) for parental responsiveness and parental control were included.Validity: -As the Scale has been prepared on the basis of studies by Baumrind the Scale can be thought to have sufficient construct validity with respect to parenting Style.The criterion validity was also assessed by correlating the scores of the Scales on a sample of 45 students.As such, the validity coefficient for responsiveness was 0.81 and for control subscale 0.77.

Reliability: -
The popular testretest method of calculating reliability coefficient was used with an interval of 2 weeks.For responsiveness variables it was 0.82 and for control variables 0.84.Thus, apparently the Scale has sufficient reliability and validity for using it on college students of plus 2 level.

Conclusion:
The purpose of the present study was to develop and validate a Scale for measuring parenting style as perceived by the Intermediate class students towards their parents.Item analysis and assessment of reliability and validity indicates that the Scale is useful for assessing the parenting style of students of classes of Intermediate level.It was found that authoritarian parenting produces greater performance orientation whereas authoritative parenting inculcated approval orientation and negligent parenting was responsible for developing underdefined goals and performance avoidance goals.These findings are similar to that of Baumrind.Hence the Scale is fit for use for the type of sample for which it was tried out.

Table 1
Parental behaviour highlighting the four styles of parenting

Table 2
't' values of 19 responsiveness items and 19 control items for the final version of the Scale