Perceptions of Parents Scales – College Student

1. Abstract

The Perceptions of Parents Scales – College Student (POPS) is a psychometric questionnaire developed within the conceptual framework of Self-Determination Theory (SDT) to evaluate late adolescents’ and young adults’ retrospective and ongoing appraisals of their parents’ caregiving styles. Specifically designed for college students navigating the developmental transition toward emerging adulthood, the instrument operationalizes two primary socializing dimensions hypothesized by SDT to support or undermine intrinsic motivation and psychological adjustment: autonomy support versus control, and parental involvement versus neglect or detachment. The scale comprises 42 self-report items partitioned into two symmetrical 21-item sub-batteries assessing maternal and paternal figures independently. Respondents rate each statement along a 7-point Likert-type continuum ranging from 1 (not at all true) through 4 (somewhat true) to 7 (very true). Psychometric investigations consistently indicate robust structural integrity, yielding high internal consistency coefficients (Cronbach’s alphas typically spanning .82 to .93 across subscales), sound test-retest reliability, and well-supported convergent, discriminant, and construct validity. Higher scores on parental autonomy support and involvement consistently correlate with greater vitality, psychological well-being, self-regulation, academic competence, and healthy identity consolidation, whereas controlling and uninvolved perceptions reliably forecast depressive affect, amotivation, and lower self-worth. The scale remains a foundational tool in developmental, educational, and clinical psychology research.

2. Keywords

Perceptions of Parents Scales, POPS, Self-Determination Theory, Autonomy Support, Parental Involvement, Emerging Adulthood, Parenting Styles, College Adjustment, Basic Psychological Needs, Internalization

3. Authors

The Perceptions of Parents Scales (POPS) framework was formulated under the auspices of the Human Motivation Program within the Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology at the University of Rochester. Key contributors to the conceptualization and psychometric establishment of the POPS family of instruments include:

• Robert J. Robbins, Ph.D. – University of Rochester; primary investigator on the empirical validation of the college-student version of the instrument examining parental autonomy support and developmental adjustment.
• Edward L. Deci, Ph.D. – Emeritus Professor of Psychology, Gowen Professor in the Social Sciences, Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology, University of Rochester; co-founder of Self-Determination Theory.
• Richard M. Ryan, Ph.D. – Research Professor, Institute for Positive Psychology and Education, Australian Catholic University; Emeritus Professor, University of Rochester; co-founder of Self-Determination Theory.
• Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. – Professor of Psychology, Frances L. Hiatt School of Psychology, Clark University; pioneer in early operationalizations of parental autonomy support and involvement within the Rochester motivation research group.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Perceptions of Parents Scales – College Student is to quantify how young adults perceive the relational climate established by their maternal and paternal socialization agents. During the life stage frequently designated as emerging adulthood, individuals encounter unprecedented demands for self-governance, decision-making autonomy, and identity synthesis, all while fundamentally renegotiating their psychological dependence on their families of origin. The POPS was engineered to address the qualitative nature of this renegotiation by focusing not simply on global parental warmth, but specifically on whether parenting behavior facilitates self-directed volition or imposes external coercion.

In developmental and educational research contexts, the POPS allows investigators to test theoretical models linking family-of-origin dynamics to college adjustment, self-regulated learning, scholastic attrition, and occupational aspirations. Researchers can clarify whether parental inputs function as continuing resources or persistent developmental stressors when students face autonomous living, academic rigors, and complex interpersonal decisions.

In clinical and counseling settings, the POPS provides clinicians with a standardized diagnostic profile of an individual’s internalized relational working models. Therapists working in college counseling centers frequently encounter undergraduates experiencing identity diffusion, perfectionistic paralysis, generalized anxiety, or major depressive episodes rooted in conditional parental regard or intrusive psychological control. By delineating separate indices for mother and father, clinicians can discern asymmetrical parental dynamics (e.g., an autonomy-supportive maternal bond juxtaposed with a coercive paternal dynamic) and map these family environments to the student’s current affective distress, maladaptive coping patterns, or autonomy deficits.

5. Psychological Construct

The POPS assesses perceived socialization along distinct dimensions derived from Self-Determination Theory. Rather than categorizing parenting into rigid typologies, the POPS conceptualizes parenting as a multi-dimensional social environment that varies along distinct continua:

Autonomy Support vs. Psychological Control

Autonomy Support represents the degree to which parents actively acknowledge the emerging adult’s unique internal frame of reference, encourage independent problem-solving, provide meaningful rationales for constraints, and validate the young adult’s personal initiatives, perspectives, and emotions. An autonomy-supportive parent treats the student as a volitional agent capable of self-directed decision-making (e.g., “My mother/father, whenever possible, allows me to choose what to do”).

Conversely, the negative pole of this construct captures Psychological Control and Coercion. It assesses the extent to which parents exert pressure through intrusive, conditional, or manipulative means, insisting that the offspring conform to parental life plans and expectations (e.g., “My mother/father tries to tell me how to run my life” and “My mother/father insists upon my doing things his/her way”). Coercive parenting subverts the child’s autonomous agency, generating introjected regulation characterized by guilt, anxiety, and contingent self-worth.

Parental Involvement

Parental Involvement denotes the sustained dedication of material, temporal, and emotional resources by parents to their emerging adult child. It reflects active interest in the offspring’s life, accessibility, empathetic listening, and expressive affection. High involvement communicates that the individual is valued and worthy of support (e.g., “My mother/father finds time to talk with me” and “My mother/father puts time and energy into helping me”).

The inverse of involvement is parental detachment, indifference, or rejection. Items operationalizing low involvement probe emotional unavailability, chronic distraction, or neglect (e.g., “My mother/father often seems too busy to attend to me” and “My mother/father is not very involved with my concerns”). In SDT, involvement provides the foundational experience of relatedness, which forms the interpersonal substrate facilitating the internalization of cultural and personal values.

Warmth and Conditional Regard

Woven throughout the scale is an appraisal of emotional warmth, unconditional acceptance, and affection versus rejection and disappointment (e.g., “My mother/father accepts me and likes me as I am” versus “My mother/father seems to be disappointed in me a lot”). Parental unconditional acceptance safeguards emerging adults from internalizing toxic conditional self-regard, buffering against psychological vulnerability during transitional life phases.

6. Theoretical Framework

The Perceptions of Parents Scales are grounded in Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985, 2000), a macro-theory of human motivation, personality development, and wellness. Central to SDT is Basic Psychological Needs Theory (BPNT), which posits that optimal human functioning, psychological vitality, and personal integration require the ongoing satisfaction of three fundamental psychological needs:

• Autonomy: The universal requirement to experience oneself as the initiator, author, and source of one’s own actions, rather than an entity coerced by external pressures or internal compulsions.
• Competence: The felt sense of mastery, effective environmental interaction, and opportunities to exercise and expand one’s capacities.
• Relatedness: The need to experience secure, reciprocal belonging, feeling cared for by significant others, and contributing meaningfully to others.

According to Organismic Integration Theory (OIT), another sub-theory within SDT, social environments that are autonomy-supportive and involved facilitate the internalization and integration of behavioral regulations. When parents provide autonomy support alongside warmth and structural involvement, emerging adults naturally transform external guidelines and educational values into autonomous, internally integrated self-regulations (intrinsic and identified regulations). In contrast, when parents resort to controlling, conditional, or uninvolved parenting, internalization stalls at external regulation (compliance out of fear of punishment or desire for reward) or introjected regulation (compliance driven by guilt, shame, and pride contingencies).

The POPS operationalizes these developmental assumptions directly. By measuring how parents are perceived across autonomy-supportive and involved facets, the scale models the environmental affordance of basic need satisfaction. Parents who score high on autonomy support and involvement nurture the adolescent’s need satisfaction, leading to proactive developmental adaptation, resilience, self-concordant goal selection, and higher subjective well-being in university life.

7. Validity

Extensive psychometric investigations have established the validity of the POPS across diverse late-adolescent and university cohorts.

Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity is evidenced by significant, theoretically predicted associations between the POPS subscales and related motivational, personality, and family dynamics constructs. Research demonstrates that perceived parental autonomy support is positively correlated with general self-esteem (Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale), autonomous self-regulation (Self-Regulation Questionnaires), perceived academic competence, and perceived life satisfaction. Conversely, perceived controlling and unsupportive parenting correlates positively with trait anxiety, depressive symptoms, alienation, and external locus of control.

In validation studies by Robbins (1994) and subsequent work by Niemiec et al. (2006), students who perceived their parents as providing greater autonomy support exhibited higher autonomous motivation for attending college, greater persistence through academic difficulties, and lower instances of burnout. Furthermore, convergent validity is reinforced by strong correlations with classic family dynamic measures, such as the Family Environment Scale (FES) and the Parental Authority Questionnaire (PAQ), where POPS autonomy support corresponds closely with authoritative parenting, while low autonomy support aligns with authoritarian parenting.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity analyses demonstrate that perceived autonomy support is structurally and empirically distinct from mere parental permissiveness or lack of discipline. The POPS distinguishes between an autonomy-supportive parent (who provides choices and reasons while remaining invested) and an uninvolved/neglectful parent (who provides freedom out of abandonment or apathy). Inter-correlations between the maternal and paternal forms (.35 to .55) indicate that respondents differentiate maternal from paternal behaviors, rejecting the idea of a single non-differentiated parental halo bias.

Predictive Validity

Longitudinal and cross-sectional designs have established that POPS indices predict key objective and subjective outcomes over the college trajectory. High POPS scores predict successful socio-emotional transition to campus life, higher academic grade point averages, decreased academic probation rates, and lower incidence of substance abuse and disordered eating behaviors. These effects often remain significant even after controlling for baseline psychological distress and socioeconomic status.

8. Reliability

The reliability of the Perceptions of Parents Scales – College Student has been documented across numerous studies in educational, personality, and developmental psychology:

Internal Consistency

The internal consistency of the POPS is consistently strong across diverse university cohorts. Published studies report Cronbach’s alpha coefficients as follows:

• Mother Autonomy Support: α = .84 to .91
• Mother Involvement: α = .83 to .89
• Total Mother Scale (Composite): α = .88 to .93
• Father Autonomy Support: α = .86 to .92
• Father Involvement: α = .85 to .91
• Total Father Scale (Composite): α = .89 to .94

Test-Retest Stability

Test-retest reliability assessments across intervals ranging from two weeks to three months demonstrate high temporal stability in emerging adults’ perceptions. Intraclass correlation coefficients and Pearson test-retest coefficients reliably fall within the range of r = .78 to r = .87, demonstrating that perceived parental styles reflect stable mental representations of the parent-child relationship rather than transient fluctuations in daily mood or immediate parent-student disagreements.

9. Factor Analysis

Both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) have been used to evaluate the latent factor structure of the 42 items comprising the POPS College Student scale.

Factor Extraction and Loadings

Initial exploratory factor analyses utilizing principal axis factoring and oblique (promax/oblimin) rotations typically reveal distinct two-factor structures for each parent: an Autonomy Support / Non-Coercion factor and an Involvement / Warmth factor. Items assessing independence, choice, and validation load heavily on the Autonomy Support factor (standardized loadings typically between .52 and .81). Conversely, items evaluating parental time expenditure, emotional availability, and empathetic contact load predominantly on the Involvement factor (loadings between .48 and .84). Cross-loadings between these factors are generally modest, although they share moderate positive inter-factor correlations (typically r = .40 to .60), reflecting the common positive affective tone of authoritative parenting.

Confirmatory Structural Modeling

Confirmatory factor analytic investigations have compared single-factor (general parental goodness), correlated two-factor (Autonomy Support vs. Involvement), and hierarchical models. Multiple studies confirm that correlated two-factor models (or bifactor models featuring a general positive parenting dimension alongside specific autonomy and involvement group factors) provide superior fit compared to single-factor alternatives:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Values consistently exceed .91 to .95.
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): Typically ranges from .90 to .94.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Estimates range from .045 to .065 (90% CI [.038, .071]), indicating acceptable to close model fit.
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Observed values consistently remain below the .06 benchmark.

Factorial invariance testing has further established strict measurement invariance (configural, metric, and scalar) across gender, confirming that the POPS measures the underlying parenting constructs equivalently for male and female college students.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Test Type: Self-report psychological questionnaire / psychometric assessment tool.
• Target Population: College/university students, late adolescents, and emerging adults (generally ages 17 to 25).
• Administration Format: Individual or group administration; paper-and-pencil or computerized/online survey systems.
• Item Count: 42 items total (21 items evaluating the mother/maternal figure; 21 identical items evaluating the father/paternal figure).
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert-type response scale with anchors:
  • 1 = not at all true
  • 4 = somewhat true
  • 7 = very true
• Administration Time: Approximately 10 to 15 minutes.
• Reverse-Scored Items: Items 2, 6, 12, 13, 14, 15, 20, 21 (for Mother) and Items 23, 27, 33, 34, 35, 36, 41, 42 (for Father) represent controlling, uninvolved, or unaccepting behaviors and must be reverse-scored prior to calculating subscale totals or composite indexes: $$\text{Reversed Score} = 8 – \text{Raw Score}$$.
• Scoring Procedures:
  • Maternal Autonomy Support: Average or sum of items assessing maternal choice, perspective-taking, and absence of coercion (e.g., Items 1, 2 [reversed], 4, 5, 8, 11, 14 [reversed], 17, 19).
  • Maternal Involvement: Average or sum of items assessing maternal attention, presence, empathy, and positive regard (e.g., Items 3, 6 [reversed], 7, 9, 10, 12 [reversed], 13 [reversed], 15 [reversed], 16, 18, 20 [reversed], 21 [reversed]).
  • Paternal Subscales: Calculated using identical item mappings for items 22–42.
  • Composite Scores: Researchers frequently construct aggregate parental autonomy support and parental involvement scores, or a total positive parenting score, by calculating means across applicable items.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Perceptions of Parents Scales – College Student was developed in the early 1990s as part of clinical dissertation and psychometric initiatives led by Robert J. Robbins, Edward L. Deci, and Richard M. Ryan at the University of Rochester (formalized around 1994). The scale is made accessible for academic, research, and non-commercial educational purposes without charge via the official Self-Determination Theory research repository at selfdeterminationtheory.org. Researchers and practitioners are permitted to reproduce and administer the questionnaire provided that appropriate academic attribution is maintained in publications and presentations. Commercial exploitation, incorporation into proprietary commercial diagnostic batteries, or resale of the instrument without prior written authorization from the authors or the SDT operational entity is prohibited.

12. References

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior. Plenum Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2271-7

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_01

Grolnick, W. S., & Ryan, R. M. (1989). Parent styles associated with children’s self-regulation and competence in school. Journal of Educational Psychology, 81(2), 143–154. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.81.2.143

Grolnick, W. S., Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1997). Internalization within the family: The self-determination theory perspective. In J. E. Grusec & L. Kuczynski (Eds.), Parenting and children’s internalization of values: A handbook of contemporary theory (pp. 135–161). John Wiley & Sons.

Niemiec, C. P., Lynch, M. F., Vansteenkiste, M., Bernstein, J., Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2006). The antecedents and consequences of autonomous self-regulation for college: A self-determination theory perspective on socialization. Journal of Adolescence, 29(5), 761–775. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2005.11.009

Robbins, R. J. (1994). An assessment of perceptions of parental autonomy support and control: Child and college student points of view (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Rochester, Rochester, NY.

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2017). Self-determination theory: Basic psychological needs in motivation, development, and wellness. Guilford Press. https://doi.org/10.1521/978.14625/28769

Soenens, B., & Vansteenkiste, M. (2010). A theoretical upgrade of the concept of parental psychological control: Proposing new insights on the basis of self-determination theory. Developmental Review, 30(1), 74–99. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2009.11.001

13. Items of the Scale