Development and Validation of the Parents’ Gendered Emotion Beliefs Scale

Objectives The aim of the current research was to develop and validate a parent, self-report questionnaire to measure parents’ gendered beliefs about emotion. Methods Scale items were first developed based on a previous qualitative study examining emotions, parenting, and gender in a sample of parents. The Parents’ Gendered Emotion Beliefs scale (PGEB) was validated in a sample of 704 parents of middle childhood youth. Results Item-response theory analyses indicated a three-factor solution with factors measuring beliefs consistent with: gendered emotion expression, gender-neutral emotion expression, and gendered emotion socialization. All factors showed good internal consistency with alphas ranging from 0.79 to 0.90. Analyses then examined convergent validity by correlating PGEB factors to established measures of broad emotion beliefs, emotion socialization, family expressiveness, and child emotion regulation and psychopathology. Conclusions Overall, findings support the PGEB, its factor structure and psychometric properties, and its potential to contribute to our understanding of the role of gender in emotion socialization and children’s emotional development.