Clorinda Schenck:
Graduate Student, Clinical Psychology
“Do I matter to my (Mexican-American vs Anglo) Dad?: Cross-ethnic equivalence and differences in adolescents’ reports of ‘mattering.’”
Throughout the twentieth century the predominant conceptualization of the father’s role was as a “breadwinner.” Recent societal changes including increasing involvement of fathers in children’s lives has reshaped scholarly conceptions of the father-child relationship. Research on fatherhood has burgeoned, though work with stepfathers and ethnic minority fathers is relatively lacking. One aspect of the father-child relationship that has been neglected in the literature is “mattering.” Mattering is defined as the degree to which a child believes he/she matters to his/her parent, and has been shown to be related to adolescents’ internalizing and externalizing problems (Schenck, 2005; Schenck et al, Under Review). This presentation will explore the underlying factor structure and cross-ethnic equivalence of a new measure of mattering to residential fathers.
The data presented is from the first wave of a longitudinal study of 392 12-13 year old Anglo- and Mexican-American children and their intact or stepfather families. The mattering scale is a 7-item, 5 point likert-scale (sample item: “I believe I really matter to my dad”) (cronbach’s alpha = .86). Confirmatory factor analyses revealed good fit of the single factor model, verifying the scale’s hypothesized unidimensionality. Invariance analyses indicated that the model was largely invariant with respect to ethnicity, with overall factor structure, loading, and latent intercept equivalence models achieving good fit.
Despite reasonable measurement equivalence across ethnicities, further analyses revealed an unexpected mean difference in overall levels of mattering; Mexican-American adolescents report mattering less to their fathers than Anglo-American adolescents. Item-level analyses revealed that this ethnic difference was pervasive across items. In further exploration of these differences, stepwise regression analyses were conducted on 22 items specifying paternal behaviors hypothesized to predict mattering(e.g., How often does he tell you he loves you?). Seven items independentlyaccounted for significant variance in mattering (total r2= .62). Exploration of mean differences across ethnicity on these “ingredients” of mattering revealed that Mexican-American adolescents perceived their fathers as performing 6 of 7 behaviors significantly less often than Anglo-American adolescents, providing one possible explanation for overall mean differences. Additionally, potential attitudinal, socioenvironmental, and response bias explanations of these cultural differences will bediscussed.
Schenck, C.E. (2005). Is mattering additive or interactive? In D. Saenz (Chair), Do Fathers Matter to Adolescents? Assessing the Meaning of Fathers & Stepfathers in Mexican- and Anglo-American Adolescent Outcomes. Symposium held at the 85th Annual Convention for Western Psychological Association, Portland, Oregon.
Schenck, C.E., Braver, S.L, Wolchik, S.A., Saenz, D., Cookston, J.T., & Fabricius, W.V. (Under Review) Do I Matter to My (Step- and Non-Residential) Dad?:
The Relation Between Perceived Mattering and Adolescent Mental Health Problems.