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A Further Examination of the Distinction Between Dependency-Oriented and Achievement-Oriented Parental Psychological Control: Psychometric Properties of the DAPCS with French-Speaking Late Adolescents

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Abstract

Psychological control refers to parental behaviors that intrude on the psychological and emotional development of the child. In 2010, Soenens et al. proposed a distinction between two domain-specific expressions of psychological control, that is, Dependency-oriented Psychological Control (DPC) and Achievement-oriented Psychological Control (APC). The aim of this study was to evaluate the factor structure, reliability, and convergent validity of the French form of the Dependency-oriented and Achievement-oriented Psychological Control Scale (DAPCS; Soenens et al. in J Pers 78(1):217–256, 2010) in a sample of late adolescents (N = 291, mean age = 21.65). Confirmatory factor analyses confirmed the hypothesized two-factor solution of the DAPCS for paternal as well as for maternal ratings. Moreover, high indices of internal consistency indicated that both subscales produced reliable scores. Further, convergent validity was confirmed by theoretically consistent associations between the DAPCS’ subscales and well-established assessments of general parenting style dimensions. Finally, results evidenced gender specific patterns supporting the relevance of domain differentiation in the assessment of psychological control. Overall, the results of this study indicated that the French form of the DAPCS might be a useful instrument to assess two domain-specific types of parental psychological control among French-speaking adolescents.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the students who kindly volunteered to participate in the study. We also thank Valérie Rossier for assistance with DAPCS translation and Marjorie Grivel for assistance with data processing. Finally, we are thankful to Prof. Dr Bart Soenens from the Department of Developmental, Social, and Personality Psychology of Ghent University for his helpful comments and suggestions on the first draft of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. LabDCI, Institute of Psychology, University of Lausanne, Site de Dorigny Anthropole, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Gregory Mantzouranis, Grégoire Zimmermann & Elodie Biermann Mahaim

  2. Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

    Nicolas Favez

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  1. Gregory Mantzouranis
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  2. Grégoire Zimmermann
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  3. Elodie Biermann Mahaim
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Correspondence to Gregory Mantzouranis or Grégoire Zimmermann.

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Gregory Mantzouranis and Grégoire Zimmermann contributed equally to this work.

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Mantzouranis, G., Zimmermann, G., Biermann Mahaim, E. et al. A Further Examination of the Distinction Between Dependency-Oriented and Achievement-Oriented Parental Psychological Control: Psychometric Properties of the DAPCS with French-Speaking Late Adolescents. J Child Fam Stud 21, 726–733 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-011-9525-5

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