(PS7-37) Evaluating the Psychometric Properties of Parenting Measures for a Daily Diary Format

Abstract Text:

Background: The Family Accommodation Scale – Anxiety (FASA) and Egna Minnen Betraffande Uppfostran – Short Form (S-EMBU) are measures that assess anxiety-related parenting behaviors and broader parenting styles, and have demonstrated good psychometric properties. However, standard measures administered at a single time point may be subject to retrospective recall and social desirability biases. Further, as parenting may fluctuate daily, standard measures may not capture short-term variation in parenting behaviors. Daily diary studies provide an alternative approach by collecting data more frequently from participants in their natural environment, increasing ecological validity and reducing potential biases. We modified the FASA and S-EMBU for a daily diary format to assess these parenting constructs at the daily level as part of a larger study on intergenerational transmission of anxiety. This study will present preliminary descriptives and psychometrics of these measures, including reporting parents’ adherence to surveys, reliability, and daily parent variability.

Method: 73 parents with at least mild anxiety symptoms (GAD-7 score > 5; Mage= 42.3, Female = 87.7%; Non-Hispanic = 87.7%) completed daily diaries for 28 days, assessing their parenting behaviors via the daily diary FASA (9 items) and S-EMBU (22 items) over the past 24 hours. The FASA uses a 6-point scale (where 0=“Never” and 5=“Always”), with higher FASA mean scores indicating more accommodation behaviors. The S-EMBU uses a 5-point scale (where 0=“No, never” and 4=“Yes, most of the time”). The S-EMBU produces three subscales (rejection, emotional warmth, and overprotection), with higher total subscale scores reflecting greater frequency of that parenting style. Internal consistency across all diaries was evaluated using Cronbach’s alphas. We ran intercept-only mixed-effects models to estimate reliability coefficients for within-person change over time. Lastly, daily parenting variability was calculated using the Mean Square of Successive Differences (MSSD). Higher MSSDs scores indicate greater parenting variability.

Results: On average, parents completed 21 out of 28 diaries (75%). The FASA had good internal consistency (a = .89). Similarly, S-EMBU showed good internal consistency (a = .81), with its subscales yielding varying levels of reliability: rejection (a = .60), warmth (a = .88), and overprotection (a = .68). The FASA captured within-person change with acceptable reliability (Rc = .77), and the S-EMBU demonstrated excellent within-person reliability (Rc = .96) across all diaries. Parents had MSSD scores of 13.7 (SD = 13.9) on the FASA, 0.99 (SD = 2.78) on the rejection subscale, 6.96 (SD = 2.78) on the warmth subscale, and 3.81 (SD = 2.91) on the overprotection subscale of the S-EMBU.

Conclusion: The modified FASA and S-EMBU appear to be acceptable measures for capturing daily variations in anxiety-related parenting behaviors and broader parenting styles. Compared to other parenting studies, we found greater variability in parenting styles across all days. We will present additional psychometric properties (e.g., convergent and construct validity) as well as how these modified versions compare to traditional FASA and S-EMBU administration.