Measuring child-rearing goals for parents with young children: A scoping review

This scoping review summarizes and consolidates the parenting goals for young children captured in existing parent-report measures, and the characteristics of studies that employed them. Five electronic databases were systematically searched to identify original studies that used a self-report measure for parenting goals during the child's first 5 years. Characteristics of the parenting goals measures and the studies that employed them were extracted and synthesized. A deductive approach was used to reduce the parenting goals items across instruments into representative domains. Fourteen original parenting goals measures and their modifications (i.e., 24 unique measures in total) were identified in 44 research articles from 41 original studies. Items from these measures were synthesized into 33 representative domains. Findings will inform the direction of future research and the development of a comprehensive measure of parenting goals for parents with young children that can be applied across cultures, economic backgrounds, informants, and parenting contexts.