Research Symposium

BIO

I am from Tampa, Florida and am second-year senior at FSU. I am studying psychology with a minor in sociology. I am interested in going to law school, specifically focusing on family law. I have always had a passion for research since high school, and I was very excited to learn about the qualitative research process through UROP. I will be able to apply my understanding of both qualitative and quantitative research in my future academic endeavors.

Paradigms of Parenting: Intensive Parenting Across Identities Explored Through Mixed Methodology

Abstract

Intensive parenting attitudes are a set of beliefs about parenting focused on five themes: essentialism, fulfillment, challenging, stimulation, and child- centered. This construct has been previously studied in White, middle-class mothers, and research on this topic has lacked demographic variety. This study focuses on expanding research to include participants of varying demographic backgrounds, including mothers and fathers, different economic groups, and different racial identity groups. Utilizing a convergent mixed-method design, quantitative, qualitative, and integrative analyses were conducted. Through a confirmatory factor analysis and measurement invariance analyses, a popular intensive parenting measure showed configural invariance across racial groups and scalar invariance across economic groups. Semi-structured interviews revealed how key domains of intensive parenting were described in a racially and economically diverse sample. Integrative analysis findings highlighted how contextual variables played a key role in quantitative and qualitative results. More research is needed to fully understand how to quantitatively measure intensive parenting attitudes for racially minoritized populations.

Keywords: Intensive Parenting Attitudes, Mixed Methodology, Demographics