Cross-national generalizability of patterns of parental rearing behaviour: Invariance of EMBU dimensional representations of healthy subjects from Australia, Denmark, Hungary, Italy and The Netherlands

A psychometric study was carried out on Australian, Danish, Hungarian, Italian and Dutch non-patient samples examining cross-national invariance characteristics of dimensions of perceived parental rearing behaviour and attitudes as measured by the EMBU. Of the four primary factors identified previously with Dutch Ss, namely Rejection, Emotional Warmth, Overprotection and Favouring Subject, the first three were retrieved in a similar form in the Australian, Danish and Italian healthy Ss. Less satisfactory findings emerged in the Hungarian sample. Further analyses examining metric equivalence of the scales and the strength of the factors for each group indicated that it would be warranted to carry out future pattern and level comparisons between groups from the respective countries (except Hungary) on the three factors evidencing cross-national constancy. Higher order factor analyses of the corresponding scales produced identical two-factor compositions (Care and Protection) in the Australian, Danish and Italian groups when compared to the factorial composition of EMBU scales of their Dutch counterparts, which further supported this conclusion. It was proposed to either rephrase or omit and replace the unsuitable Hungarian EMBU items by alternative items to be tried out in the next round of data gathering and their psychometric evaluation.