Development and psychometric evaluation of a new domain-specific coparenting measure: Coparenting Children's Emotion Scale

Abstract

Caregivers play an integral role in supporting children's development, not only through their individual parenting practices but also how they work together as coparents. The literature on coparenting is extensive; however, most of the research has relied on global measures to assess the quality and functioning of the coparenting relationship. Examining the coparenting relationship with domain-specific measures enables a deeper understanding of this complex family process. One domain of particular interest is emotion socialization given the vast and long-term consequences emotion socialization has on children's emotional, social, behavioral, and psychological functioning. Emotion socialization literature would benefit from a domain-specific coparenting measure, as researchers have rarely explored how coparents work together when responding to their children's emotions (i.e., coparenting children's emotions). As such, an emotion-focused coparenting measure could address gaps in both coparenting and emotion socialization literature. This study outlines the development and psychometric evaluation of a domain-specific measure of coparenting, the Coparenting Children's Emotion Scale (CCES), which assesses how parents work together when responding to their children's emotions. In the current study, the factor structure, reliability, and validity of the CCES were examined in an Australian sample. Findings from exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses showed that the CCES comprises two subscales that capture coparents' levels of support/cooperation and undermining. In the current sample, both CCES subscales demonstrated good to excellent internal consistency, and good convergent and concurrent validity. The CCES will provide researchers and practitioners with a domain-specific measure to use in exploratory and intervention research.

Keywords: cooperative coparenting; coparenting measure; coparenting relationship; emotion; emotion socialization; supportive coparenting; undermining coparenting.