Measuring parental anchoring: The development and validation of the parental anchoring scale

The purpose of the present article is to introduce and validate the Parental Anchoring Scale (PAS). The PAS measures the four dimensions of parental anchoring, a function which includes the ability to define and maintain rules (i.e., structure), actions and attitudes that promote involvement and supervision (i.e., presence), the sense of being supported by friends and family (i.e., support) and the ability to regulate negative reactions in interaction with the child (i.e., self-control). The participants (N = 372) completed an extended version of the PAS scale as well as validation measures. Parallel analysis indicated the existence of four factors in both samples and principal component analysis showed that these four components adhered closely to the hypothesized structure. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the hypothesized factor structure across two cross-cultural samples and the final scale showed very good goodness of fit at the metric measurement invariance level, internal reliability as well as convergent and discriminant validity. On a practical level, the PAS can help to pinpoint areas in parenting that are in need of special attention, while the central theoretical importance of the research lies in providing a more nuanced and multifaceted understanding of parental authority.