Development of a Parent-College Student Communication Instrument

Background: Past research suggests that parent-child communication can serve as potential protective factors to reduce alcohol misuse among college-aged children. Purpose: Given the importance of parent-college student communication, the purpose of this presentation is to provide the methodology used and preliminary findings for developing and validating an instrument to assess parent-college student communication regarding alcohol use. Methods: The process of test development, outlined in the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing, and Dillman's four stages of pretesting, was used to develop the instrument. During the pilot testing stage, a 47-item instrument was administered to a convenience sample of 208 parents of students attending a large, southeastern public university. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was used to investigate desired variable measurement of the underlying constructs for selected items. Cronbach's alpha was assessed for the selected items. Results: EFA findings revealed the items measured 3 factors, including constructs from Social Cognitive Theory, self-efficacy of parents to communicate with college-age child about alcohol use and outcome expectations of that communication. Moreover, the results support reliability of these items to measure self-efficacy and outcome expectations of parents. The preliminary results suggest the survey has evidence for producing valid and reliable scores from constructed items. Additionally, findings support the use of the constructed items for measurement of the SCT constructs related to parent-college student communication regarding alcohol-use.