Entwicklung einer Skala zur Erfassung elterlicher Unterstützung für die körperlich-sportliche Aktivität von Kindern im Grundschulalter

Several review articles suggest that parental support is associated with physical activity in children and adolescents. However, it has been criticized that poorly validated questionnaires are often used to assess supportive behavior. Furthermore, existing instruments tend to assess parental support with a general factor. Therefore, this paper presents the development of a German-language scale that can be used to assess parental support for physical activity in primary school children in a multidimensional way. In the first study (N = 489 female parents), the initial item pool was gradually reduced based on an exploratory structural equation model, and the factor structure was optimized. The originally assumed subscale “informative support” proved to be untenable. A cross-validation using confirmatory factor analysis in the second study (N = 356) yielded acceptable to good fit indices for a four-factor solution (CFI = .940, RMSEA = .053) with the subscales “support as a role model” (modelling), “support through participation” (co-participation), “emotional support”, and “instrumental support”. Initial evidence of construct validity exists for the relationships between supportive behaviors and parent’s and children’s membership in sports clubs, respectively. Limitations include, among others, untested measurement invariance between male and female parents and the failure to take parental behaviors that could have a negative impact on the child’s physical activity into account. Nevertheless, the instrument appears promising for addressing various questions related to parental influence on children’s physical activity.