About
The prevalence of smartphone ownership and extent of use in daily life has led to a variety of mental health and well-being correlates and outcomes within parents and families. For example, levels of depression and stress are associated with phone use and behavior. There are also many strong habits or areas of problematic use that may develop. For example, our recent research here at Parkview on over 260 parents found that parents spend approximately 27% of their parent-child time on their smartphone, many parents express feeling dissatisfied with or desiring to change their phone habits, may experience a low sense of control over some or most of their phone behavior, and find it difficult to change their use. Thus, many parents need assistance in changing their phone use to better align with their desire to be a fully present parent who manages their use well during parent-child and family time.
To assist parents in their development of healthy digital habits, we must have a better understanding of parents’ levels of self-efficacy surrounding the management of their phone use and behavior. Self-efficacy generally refers to one’s belief in their capacity/capabilities and can be connected with individuals’ behaviors and abilities to effectively regulate a particular area in their life. Applied to phone use and parenting, efficacy refers to a parent’s ability to effectively regulate their phone behavior in a variety of parenting situations and contexts (e.g., during stress, boredom, depressed mood, mealtimes, bedtime, etc.), and increasing parents’ sense of efficacy is important for future interventions as this should cascade into healthier parent phone behaviors and eventually improved parent well-being and potentially child well-being and development. However, no phone use efficacy scales exist in the current literature.
In this work, we seek to develop and validate a phone use efficacy scale.
Partners
Funding
Publications and Presentations
- Uva, S., & McDaniel, B. T. (2023, November). Development of the Parent Phone Use Regulation Efficacy Scale (P-PURE) [Poster presentation]. National Council on Family Relations Conference, Orlando, FL, United States.
Press