Scale parental beliefs about emotional competence in children (COMPE): Psychometric properties

Abstract

Parental beliefs regarding the emotional skills of children represent what parents think and believe about how the child develops in terms of emotion-related skills and which key abilities should be developed in this area. Emotional skill is a high impact component critical for full and healthy development. The aim of this study was to present, briefly, the construction steps of the COMPE scale and to verify the preliminary psychometric parameters, such as the dimensionality and reliability of the items. In order to reach the final form of the scale, Content Validity procedures were used for the constitution of the initial version and Item Response Theory (IRT) for the analysis of the psychometric properties of the items. As a result, the present article presents a scale with a total of 30 items capable of composing a measure for the parental beliefs mentioned, with three theoretical facets indicative of emotional skills linked to: (a) emotional expression, (b) emotional comprehension and (c) emotional regulation, which are aggregated into a single score. Based on the psychometric properties verified, it is considered that the COMPE can become an instrument option to be used with the Brazilian population in research involving parental beliefs and emotions.