Parental involvement in sport: psychometric development and empirical test of a theoretical model

The purposes of the present multistudy were to develop and provide initial construct validity for measures based on the model of parental involvement in sport (Study 1) and examine structural relationships among the constructs of the model (Study 2). In Study 1 (nparents = 342, nathletes = 223), a confirmatory factor analysis was used to verify the psychometric properties of the measures. Content and construct validity were evaluated, as well individual and composite reliability. Multi-group analysis with two independent samples provided evidence of factorial invariance. In Study 2 (nparents = 754, nathletes = 438), structural equation modeling analysis supported the hypothesised model in which athletes’ perceptions of parents’ behaviours mediated the relationship between parents’ reported behaviours and the athletes’ psychological variables conducive to their achievement in sport. The findings provide support for the parental involvement in sport model and demonstrate the role of perceptions of parents’ behaviours on young athletes’ cognitions in sport.

Infants, interfaces, and intermediation: digital parenting and the production of 'iPad baby' videos on YouTube

We investigate the ways young children’s use of mobile touchscreen interfaces is both understood and shaped by parents through the production of YouTube videos and discussions in associated comment threads. This analysis expands on, and departs from, theories of parental mediation, which have traditionally been framed through a media effects approach in analyzing how parents regulate their children’s use of broadcast media, such as television, within family life. We move beyond the limitations of an effects framing through more culturally and materially oriented theoretical lenses of mediation, considering the role mobile interfaces now play in the lives of infants through analysis of the ways parents intermediate between domestic spaces and networked publics. We propose the concept of intermediation, which builds on insights from critical interface studies as well as cultural industries literature to help account for these expanded aspects of digital parenting. Here, parents are not simply moderating children’s media use within the home, but instead operating as an intermediary in contributing to online representations and discourses of children’s digital culture. This intermediary role of parents engages with ideological tensions in locating notions of “naturalness:” the iPad’s gestural interface or the child’s digital dexterity.