Digital parenting attitude scale: validity and reliability study

Discussion and Conclusions 
The rapid rise in access of children to digital media devices sheds lights on the significance of 
parents’ digital media attitudes and digital mediation strategies. Parental awareness training was 
indicated as the initial point in enhancing children learning opportunities and simultaneously 
reducing the risks children face in using digital media. Starting from very early ages, children’s 
perceptions and using habits for digital devices were associated with the parents’ own using habits 
and the family context. Studying digital parenting attitudes has a very recent background and the 
need for assessing parental attitudes by a valid and reliable measure is obvious, especially for 
Turkish parents. Therefore, this work carried out to assess the psychometric properties of such a 
measure developed in Turkish. Digital parenting attitudes were observed as a two-dimensional 
structure. This two-dimensional structure explained the 46.1 % of the total variance. The first 
dimension, namely Approving Effective Use of Digital Media, was composed of items related to 
parents’ approval and support for their children for using digital media devices and explained 25.2 
% of the variance. The second dimension, titled as Protecting Against Digital Media Risk, was 
included items related to parental attitudes towards the risks of digital media and explained 20.8 % 
of the total variance.
The psychometric properties of Digital Parenting Attitude Scale demonstrated that the scale was a 
reliable and valid assessment device for digital parenting attitudes. This scale serves for observing 
the digital parenting attitudes of Turkish parents, who have children aged between 6 and 18. 
However, parents’ digital literacy and competence in using digital technologies may be accounted 
as a significant factor in determining parental attitudes. Therefore, in the future, the scale needed to 

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Mehmet Akif Ersoy Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi 
ISSN:1302-8944 Yıl: 2018 
Sayı: 46 
Sayfa: 149-173 
173 
be used in several samples differing in terms of socio-demographic aspects including digital 
literacy. Digital parenting attitudes are the cognitive and emotional aspects of digital parenting and 
closely related to parental mediation strategies utilized in regulating children’s digital media use. 
Hence, in the future studies aiming to investigate effective parenting strategies, these two constructs 
should be taken into consideration together to reach a whole picture.