Measuring parents' regulatory media use for themselves and their children

Introduction Parents often use media to manage their own or their child's emotions and behaviors, which is called “regulatory media use.” While the use of media to alleviate negative emotions and behaviors may be helpful in the short-term, there may be negative consequences in the long-term (e.g., for children's development of self-regulatory skills). Research remains limited, often relying on a single, binary question asking whether a parent ever uses media to calm their child. To enable future research on the effects of regulatory media use, this paper described initial scale development efforts for measuring parents' regulatory media use for themselves (parent scale) and their children (child scale). Methods These scales were tested in an aggregate sample of parents with children 1–10 years old, and with each of three subsamples representing parents of children in infancy (15-25 months old), early childhood (2–5 years old), and middle childhood (5–10 years old). Results Overall, the results provide initial support for the scales as a reliable tool for measuring regulatory media use. Both scales for parents and children had a stable three-factor structure that held within each of the three subsamples. Further, both scales had predictive validity, each predicting parenting stress and child screen time. Discussion Building upon earlier studies that often focused on single items to measure regulatory purposes, the initial scales appear to capture a multifaceted range of regulatory uses of media. The comprehensive measurement of regulatory media use enabled by these scales can inform more effective and tailored media guidelines and interventions, and the potential applications and implications for future research are discussed.