Exploring the Feasibility of Assessing Perceived Parental Rearing Styles in Spanish Children With Theembu

Abstract

Most of the available data on the dimensional structure underlying the EMBU - an originally Swedish measure designed to assess one's recollections concerning one's parents' rearing behaviour - has been obtained with adults or adolescents. In the present study, using exploratory factor analysis, an attempt was made to determine the EMBU factorial structure in a Spanish sample of children aged 7-12 years (N=205). Four factors explaining only 24% and 25% of the total variance in the ratings of the fathers and those of the mothers, respectively, and being invariant across parental sex, were interpreted: Emotional Warmth, Rejection, Control Attempts, and Favouring Subject. Results with respect to the internal consistency reliability of the corresponding scales were satisfactory, as were homogeneity figures pertaining to each set of theoretically-related items. Higher-order analyses of the first-order dimensions (mothers and fathers jointly) revealed three factors explaining 85% of the total variance: Control Attempts, Care (Rejection vs. Emotional Warmth), and Favouring Subject. The factorially-derived (first-order) scales were uncorrelated with sex of the recipient. All scales (except Rejection) correlated sizeably, negatively, with age (medium effect size) pointing, as outlined, to the need to take into account the relevant normative, design and research implications in further investigation. Some similarities and differences with findings yielded previously with adults and adolescents are briefly pinpointed.