Measuring parents’ developmental goals for their children: Updating Kagitçibasi’s approach to autonomy-relatedness in the United States and China

UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Jonathan R. Tudge, Professor (Creator)
Institution
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/

Abstract: Although many scholars continue to describe cultural differences in terms of the individualism–collectivism distinction, unidimensional measures seem unlikely to capture the richness of cultural variation in parents’ socialization goals for their children. Kagitçibasi’s (2009) theoretical model consists of a bidimensional approach with agency (autonomous to heteronomous) considered orthogonal to interpersonal distance (related to separate), yielding four quadrants. Kagitçibasi argued that countries like the United States fit into the autonomous-separate quadrant, traditional “majority-world” cultures into the heteronomous-related quadrant, and educated urbanized cultural groups in majority-world societies into the autonomous-related quadrant. Given conceptual problems with the scales Kagitçibasi used to measure these constructs, we developed, piloted, and validated the Related–Autonomous–Separate–Heteronomous (RASH) Scale and examined its psychometric properties and measurement invariance in a sample of Chinese (N?=?464) and North American (N?=?635) parents. Our results suggest that the four types of parental developmental goals (relatedness, separation, autonomy, and heteronomy) are not as neatly related as Kagitçibasi’s model assumes; specifically, the Chinese and North American parents in our study highly valued both autonomous and related developmental goals. Our validation of the RASH scale is an important first step to develop a more appropriate measure of parental socialization goals for cross-cultural investigation.

Additional Information

Publication
Current Psychology
Language: English
Date: 2019
Keywords
Parents’ developmental goals, Socialization, Cross-cultural study, US and China, Individualism–collectivism, Kagitçibasi, Autonomy-relatedness

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