ABSTRACT
Self-determination theory (SDT) is an approach to understand human motivations, personality development and behavioral self-regulation. SDT research suggests that parental mediation styles help facilitate children’s motivations and internalization of rules, values and demands. In an effort to advance the utility of SDT knowledge about general parenting in the field of mass communication, P. M. Valkenburg et al. developed the Perceived Parental Media Mediation Scale (PPMMS) to explore media-specific parenting. Exploratory factor analysis of the PPMMS’s follow-up items led to a five-factor solution: autonomy-supportive restriction; controlling restrictive mediation; inconsistent restrictive mediation; autonomy-supportive active mediation; and controlling active mediation. Construct validity of the PPMMS was assessed by examining the relationships between each of the PPMMS’s subscales and general parenting styles, family conflict, and adolescents’ prosocial and antisocial behavior by Valkenburg et al. The PPMMS appears to be a reliable scale rooted in a widely cited theory that measures adolescents’ perceived parental media mediation.
