Abstract
Both theoretical and empirical work support variation in maternal beliefs about children’s emotions across sociocultural contexts. Cross-cultural comparisons require valid scales measuring mothers’ beliefs about children’s emotions. Therefore, we translated the Parents’ Beliefs About Children’s Emotions (PBACE) questionnaire into Chinese. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to test measurement invariance between reports from mothers of 6- to 8-year-old children on Chinese (n = 163) and English (n = 164) versions. Five of the seven scales showed measurement invariance. Validity of the Chinese translation was assessed and obtained via correlations with maternal emotion coaching/dismissing styles and emotional expressivity. Mean comparisons of mothers’ beliefs about children’s emotions in China and the US were tested for the five invariant scales. US mothers reported stronger beliefs regarding the value of anger. Chinese mothers reported stronger beliefs regarding the negative consequences of excessive positive emotions, children’s use of emotions to manipulate others, and whether children should deal with their emotions on their own. Chinese and US mothers were similar in the strength of their beliefs about children’s capacity to control their emotions. Results support the utility of the Chinese translation of the PBACE for researchers interested in emotion-related socialization processes in Chinese families.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data Availability
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
References
Asparouhov, T., & Muthén, B. (2010). Weighted least squares estimation with missing data. Mplus Technical Appendix. http://www.statmodel.com/download/GstrucMissingRevision.pdf. Accessed 10 Jul 2020
Brislin, R. W. (1980). Translation and content analysis of oral and written material. In H. C. Triandis & J. W. Berry (Eds.), Handbook of cross-cultural psychology: Methodology (pp. 389–444). Allyn and Bacon.
Byrne, B. M., Shavelson, R. J., & Muthén, B. (1989). Testing for the equivalence of factor covariance and mean structures: The issue of partial measurement invariance. Psychological Bulletin, 105(3), 456–466. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.105.3.456
Castro, V. L., Halberstadt, A. G., Lozada, F. T., & Craig, A. B. (2015). Parents' emotion-related beliefs, behaviours, and skills predict children's recognition of emotion. Infant and Child Development, 24(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.1868
Chao, R. K. (1995). Chinese and European American cultural models of the self reflected in mothers' childrearing beliefs. Ethos, 23(3), 328–354. https://doi.org/10.1525/eth.1995.23.3.02a00030
Chen, X., Hastings, P. D., Rubin, K. H., Chen, H., Cen, G., & Stewart, S. L. (1998). Child-rearing attitudes and behavioral inhibition in Chinese and Canadian toddlers: A cross-cultural study. Developmental Psychology, 34(4), 677–686. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.34.4.677
Chen, S. H., Zhou, Q., Eisenberg, N., Valiente, C., & Wang, Y. (2011). Parental expressivity and parenting styles in Chinese families: Prospective and unique relations to children’s psychological adjustment. Parenting: Science and Practice, 11(4), 288–307. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295192.2011.613725
Chen, F. M., Lin, H. S., & Li, C. H. (2012). The role of emotion in parent-child relationships: Children’s emotionality, maternal meta-emotion, and children’s attachment security. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 21(3), 403–410. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-011-9491-y
Dunsmore, J. C., & Halberstadt, A. G. (1997). How does family emotional expressiveness affect children's schemas? In K. C. Barrett (Ed.), The communication of emotion: Current research from diverse perspectives (pp. 45–68). Jossey-Bass.
Dunsmore, J. C., & Karn, M. A. (2001). Mothers' beliefs about feelings and children's emotional understanding. Early Education and Development, 12(1), 117–138. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15566935eed1201_7
Eid, M., & Diener, E. (2001). Norms for experiencing emotions in different cultures: Inter- and intranational differences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(5), 869–885. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.81.5.869
Eisenberg, N. (1996). Meta-emotion and socialization of emotion in the family—A topic whose time has come: Comment on Gottman et al. (1996). Journal of Family Psychology, 10(3), 269–276. https://doi.org/10.1037/0893-3200.10.3.269
Eisenberg, N., Cumberland, A., & Spinrad, T. L. (1998). Parental socialization of emotion. Psychological Inquiry, 9(4), 241–273. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327965pli0904_1
Finney, S. J., & DiStefano, C. (2013). Nonnormal and categorical data in structural equation modeling. In G. R. Hancock & R. O. Mueller (Eds.), Structural equation modeling: A second course (2nd ed., pp. 439–492). IAP Information Age Publishing.
Garrett-Peters, P. T., Castro, V. L., & Halberstadt, A. G. (2017). Parents' beliefs about children's emotions, children's emotion understanding, and classroom adjustment in middle childhood. Social Development, 26(3), 575–590. https://doi.org/10.1111/sode.12222
Gottman, J. M., Katz, L. F., & Hooven, C. (1997). Meta-emotion: How families communicate emotionally. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Grabell, A. S., Olson, S. L., Miller, A. L., Kessler, D. A., Felt, B., Kaciroti, N., Wang, L., & Tardif, T. (2015). The impact of culture on physiological processes of emotion regulation: A comparison of US and Chinese preschoolers. Developmental Science, 18(3), 420–435. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12227
Halberstadt, A. G., Cassidy, J., Stifter, C. A., Parke, R. D., & Fox, N. A. (1995). Self-expressiveness within the family context: Psychometric support for a new measure. Psychological Assessment, 7(1), 93–103. https://doi.org/10.1037/1040-3590.7.1.93
Halberstadt, A. G., Dunsmore, J. C., Parker, A. E., Beale, K. S., Thompson, J. A., & Bryant, A. Jr. (2008). Parents’ beliefs about children’s emotions. Available from authors. North Carolina State University.
Halberstadt, A. G., Dunsmore, J. C., Bryant Jr., A., Parker, A. E., Beale, K. S., & Thompson, J. A. (2013). Development and validation of the parents’ beliefs about children’s emotions questionnaire. Psychological Assessment, 25(4), 1195–1210. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0033695
Hambleton, R. K. (1994). The rise and fall of criterion-referenced measurement? Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 13(4), 21–26. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-3992.1994.tb00567.x
Hu, L., & Bentler, P. M. (1999). Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling, 6(1), 1–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/10705519909540118
Jose, P. E., Huntsinger, C. S., Huntsinger, P. R., & Liaw, F.-R. (2000). Parental values and practices relevant to young children’s social development in Taiwan and the United States. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 31(6), 677–702. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022100031006002
Kenny, D. A. (2020). Measuring model fit. Davidakenny.nethttp://www.davidakenny.net/cm/fit.htm
Lagacé-Séguin, D. G., & Coplan, R. J. (2005). Maternal emotional styles and child social adjustment: Assessment, correlates, outcomes and goodness of fit in early childhood. Social Development, 14(4), 613–636. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9507.2005.00320.x
Li, D., & Li, X. (2019). Within- and between-individual variation in fathers’ emotional expressivity in Chinese families: Contributions of children’s emotional expressivity and fathers’ emotion-related beliefs and perceptions. Social Development, 28(4), 960–978. https://doi.org/10.1111/sode.12368
Liang, Z.-B., Zhang, G.-Z., Chen, H.-C., & Zhang, P. (2012). Relations among parental meta-emotion philosophy, parental emotion expressivity, and children’s social competence. Acta Psychologica Sinica, 44(2), 199–210. https://doi.org/10.3724/SP.J.1041.2012.00199
Liu, M., Chen, X., Rubin, K., Zheng, S., Cui, L., Li, D., Chen, H., & Wang, L. (2005). Autonomy- vs. connectedness-oriented parenting behaviours in Chinese and Canadian mothers. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 29(6), 489–495. https://doi.org/10.1080/01650250500147063
Liu, Y., Millsap, R. E., West, S. G., Tein, J.-Y., Tanaka, R., & Grimm, K. J. (2017). Testing measurement invariance in longitudinal data with ordered-categorical measures. Psychological Methods, 22(3), 486–506. https://doi.org/10.1037/met0000075
Lozada, F. T., Halberstadt, A. G., Craig, A. B., Dennis, P. A., & Dunsmore, J. C. (2016). Parents’ beliefs about children’s emotions and parents’ emotion-related conversations with their children. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 25(5), 1525–1538. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-015-0325-1
Marsh, H. W., Hau, K.-T., & Wen, Z. (2004). In search of golden rules: Comment on hypothesis-testing approaches to setting cutoff values for fit indexes and dangers in overgeneralizing Hu and Bentler’s (1999) findings. Structural Equation Modeling, 11(3), 320–341. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15328007sem1103_2
Millsap, R. E. (2011). Statistical approaches to measurement invariance. Routledge.
Millsap, R. E., & Yun-Tein, J. (2004). Assessing factorial invariance in ordered-categorical measures. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 39(3), 479–515. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327906MBR3903_4
Muthén, L. K., & Muthén, B. O. (1998-2017). Mplus user’s guide (8th ed.). Muthén & Muthén.
National Bureau of Statistics of China. (n.d.). Women and men in China Facts and Figures 2019. Retrieved October 12, 2020, from https://cnlgbtdata.com/files/uploads/2020/01/%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E7%A4%BE%E4%BC%9A%E4%B8%AD%E7%9A%84%E5%A5%B3%E4%BA%BA%E5%92%8C%E7%94%B7%E4%BA%BA2019EN-final.pdf
Ngan, S.-K. (2014). An exploratory study on the relationship among the child's social competence, parenting stress and maternal emotional styles for parents of children with autism spectrum disorder [Master’s thesis, University of Hong Kong]. The HKU Scholars Hub.
Ornaghi, V., & Grazzani, I. (2013). The relationship between emotional-state language and emotion understanding: A study with school-age children. Cognition and Emotion, 27(2), 356–366. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2012.711745
Pons, F., & Harris, P. L. (2019). Children’s understanding of emotions or Pascal’s “error”: Review and prospects. In V. LoBue, K. Pérez-Edgar, & K. A. Buss (Eds.), Handbook of emotional development (pp. 431–449). Springer International Publishing. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17332-6_17.
Putnick, D. L., & Bornstein, M. H. (2016). Measurement invariance conventions and reporting: The state of the art and future directions for psychological research. Developmental Review, 41, 71–90. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2016.06.004
Russell, J. A., & Yik, M. S. M. (1996). Emotion among the Chinese. In M. H. Bond (Ed.), The handbook of Chinese psychology (pp. 166–188). Oxford University Press.
Steenkamp, J.-B. E. M., & Baumgartner, H. (1998). Assessing measurement invariance in cross-national consumer research. Journal of Consumer Research, 25(1), 78–90. https://doi.org/10.1086/209528
Stelter, R. L., & Halberstadt, A. G. (2011). The interplay between parental beliefs about children's emotions and parental stress impacts children's attachment security. Infant and Child Development, 20(3), 272–287. https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.693
Tsai, J. L. (2007). Ideal affect: Cultural causes and behavioral consequences. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2(3), 242–259. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6916.2007.00043.x
U.S. Census Bureau (n.d.). Selected social characteristics in the United States. Retrieved October 12, 2020, https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?q=dp02&hidePreview=false&tid=ACSDP1Y2018.DP02&vintage=2018
Vandenberg, R. J., & Lance, C. E. (2000). A review and synthesis of the measurement invariance literature: Suggestions, practices, and recommendations for organizational research. Organizational Research Methods, 3(1), 4–70. https://doi.org/10.1177/109442810031002
Yeh, K. (2002). Parental meta-emotion philosophy styles and measures. In T. L. Hu, M. Hsu, & K. H. Yeh (Eds.), Affect, emotion and culture: Anthropological and psychological studies in Taiwanese society (pp. 268–297). Institute of Ethnology Academia Sinica.
Zhang, J. (2016). Relationship between acculturation and Chinese parents’ beliefs about young children’s emotions [Master’s thesis, san Diego State University]. SDSU Theses and Dissertations.
Funding
This work was supported by funds awarded to Lin Tan from the Grants Award Program for Doctoral Student in Human Development, Department of Human Development, Virginia Tech.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of Interest
On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary Information
ESM 1
(DOCX 16 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Tan, L., Smith, C.L. & Dunsmore, J.C. Validation of a Chinese translation of the Parents’ Beliefs About Children’s Emotions questionnaire and measurement invariance across Chinese and US mothers. Curr Psychol 42, 13486–13496 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-02614-6
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-02614-6