Self-expressiveness within the family context: Psychometric support for a new measure.

Abstract

The family appears to be an important setting for learning about emotions and how to express them within a social context. Because of the need for reliable and valid measures of emotional expressiveness in the family, the Self-Expressiveness in the Family Questionnaire (SEFQ) is introduced and evaluated in four studies with 499 mothers and 362 fathers. Factor analyses indicate highly consistent patterns of loadings for a two-factor solution across the four studies. The resulting positive and negative scales are highly internally consistent and stable over time. Evidence of good convergent, discriminant, and construct validity was obtained, and a preliminary short form with good internal consistency and construct validity was also identified. Ideas for future research on marital and parent-child issues are suggested.Emotional expressiveness has long been of interest to scholars (e.g., Allport & Vernon, 1933; Darwin, 1872Darwin, /1965). However, it is only more recently that theorists have considered the family to be an important context in which individuals learn about emotions and emotional expressiveness. In particular, it is thought that children learn rules about what to feel (Hochsehild, 1979) and how to express those feelings (Saarni,

Longitudinal relations among parental emotional expressivity, children's regulation, and quality of socioemotional functioning.

“…Parental emotional expressivity defined in this manner includes parental expression of emotion not directed at a given child and frequently is assessed with parent-report measures (e.g., Bronstein, Fitzgerald, Briones, Pieniadz, & D'Ari, 1993;Halberstadt, 1986). Parents' reports on this construct have been substantially correlated with measures of emotional expressiveness but are more modestly and less consistently related to self-reported experience of negative emotion (e.g., anxiety, depression) and do not correlate with social desirability (Halberstadt et al, 1995). Parental emotional expressivity directed toward a specific child has often been assessed with observations as well as with parental self-reports.…”

“…Mothers completed the SelfExpressiveness in the Family Questionnaire (SEFQ) at both T1 and T2 (Halberstadt et al, 1995). Mothers rated the items on a 9-point scale ranging from 1 (rarely expresses the emotion) to 9 (frequently expresses the emotion) to indicate the frequency with which they expressed a range of emotions in a variety of settings typical for most families.…”

“…In addition, the item "Sulking over unfair treatment by a family member," which was coded as submissive negative emotion in Halberstadt (1986) but as dominant negative emotion in Halberstadt et al (1995), was left as submissive negative emotion. This decision was based on both face validity and the finding that dropping the item from the Negative Submissive scale lowered the alpha of that scale by .03 and only lowered the alpha for the Negative Dominance scale by .01.…”

“…3 Six positive expressivity items in the SEFQ that were not recommended for a short Positive expressivity scale by Halberstadt et al (1995) were dropped to save administration time. In addition, the item "Sulking over unfair treatment by a family member," which was coded as submissive negative emotion in Halberstadt (1986) but as dominant negative emotion in Halberstadt et al (1995), was left as submissive negative emotion.…”

Prediction of Children's Empathy-Related Responding From Their Effortful Control and Parents' Expressivity.

“…Therefore, anger and irritation were not coded separately from other negative emotions. Interrater reliabilities (rs) on these 3 Six positive expressivity items in the SEFQ that were not recommended for a short positive expressivity scale by Halberstadt et al (1995) were dropped to save administration time. In addition, the item "Sulking over unfair treatment by a family member," which was coded as "submissive negative emotion" in Halberstadt (1986) but as "dominant negative emotion" in Halberstadt et al (1995), was left as "submissive negative emotion."…”