The Value of Children Scale: Development, validation and standardization

Introduction. The article presents a psychometric study aimed at creating the Value of Children Scale, an original measurement method. The study is grounded in the socio-psychological concept of the personal meaning of a child. The method operationalizes the value of children as a psychological type of personal meaning — namely, as a positive terminal meaning of a child for an adult. Materials and Methods. The pilot version included 20 items and a six-item Likert-type scale. Its empirical testing was carried out on a Belarusian population sample of adults (sexually mature people), N = 1920. Psychometric development, validation and standardization of the instrument were carried out in line with a combined approach that joins the technologies of the CTT and IRT test theories. Of the two competing IRT models for polytomous response scale — i. e., the Rating Scale Model (RSM) and the Partial Credit Model (PCM) — it is the PCM that showed the best fit to the empirical data and was used as the basis for item calibration and overall scale calibration. Item-level measurement properties (discriminativity, difficulty, differential functioning, threshold statistics, criterial and construct validity), scale-level measurement properties (content, face, structural, criterial, convergent and discriminant validity), consistency and test-retest reliability were assessed. Results. The final version of the Value of Children Scale is a unidimensional standardized questionnaire that makes it possible to measure the subject’s individual level of positive terminal meaning of a child. The instrument fully complies with conventional psychometric standards and can be used for sample psychological research and individual psychodiagnostic examination. The target population includes adults, and the instrument demonstrates equally high ecological validity for respondents with different parental status. Conclusions. Future research may focus on determining the instrument’s resistance to the influence of social desirability, since the value of children is a socially approved individual trait in adults.

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