Measuring Parental Beliefs about the Developmental Significance of Preschool Children’s Daily Activities: The Children’s Daily Activities-Parental Beliefs Scale

The study presents the Children’s Daily Activities-Parental Beliefs (CDA-PB) scale, a newly developed instrument providing parental assessment of the developmental significance of family-based, preschool children’s daily activities. These activities are considered as primary contexts for understanding children’s learning and development and parental beliefs are critical for both the organization of such activities as well as parents’ participation in them. Study informants were 383 mothers of preschool children attending daycare centres and kindergartens in the greater Athens area in Greece. Mothers completed a self-report questionnaire which included the CDA-PB and two other scales targeting at the report of the frequency of daily activities’ occurrence and mothers’ participation in them. Following a series of principal component analysis with varimax rotation the final form of the CDA-PB scale consisted of 30 items loaded on five components representing the perceived significance for certain types of activities, namely: “Household and self-care activities”, “Recurrent outings”, “Pre-academic activities”, “Play activities”, and “Home entertainment activities”. In addition, inter-correlations were revealed with the other two scales. Overall, the results are compatible with empirical evidence from different cultural settings and provide initial support for the use of this scale. Limitations of the present study and future research priorities are also addressed.