Measuring Parental Behavior towards Children's Use of Media and Screen-Devices : The Development and Psychometrical Properties of a Media Parenting Scale for Parents of School-Aged Children
Abstract
Children's excessive screen use is associated with health risks such as obesity, sleepproblems, attention problems, and others. The effect of parental regulative efforts focused onscreen/media use (media parenting) is currently unclear and difficult to examine given the hetero-geneity of measuring tools used for its assessment.
We aimed to develop an inventory that wouldenable reliable and valid measurement of media parenting practices (especially active and restrictivemediation) in parents of primary school children. The inventory builds on existing tools, it is compre-hensive, yet easy to use in research setting.
The original MEPA-36 (36 items) and revised MEPA-20(20 items) inventories were examined using data from 341 Czech and Slovak parents of childrenaged between 6 and 10 years. Psychometrical properties were estimated using confirmatory factorand reliability analyses.
Model fit was better for MEPA-20 and similar to other currently availabletools. Both active and restrictive mediation subscales demonstrated high internal consistency.
Theinternal consistency of newly constructed risky mediation subscales (risky active, risky restrictive,and over-protective mediation) was low. MEPA-20, especially active and restrictive mediation sub-scales, can be recommended for research on media parenting in context of screen/media use ofschool-aged children.