Psychometric tests of Expectations of Filial Piety Scale in a Mexican-American population.
OBJECTIVE
This paper reports the development of the Expectations of Filial Piety Scale for use with Mexican-American parents regarding expectations they have of their adult children for care and support.


BACKGROUND
Earlier work by the authors demonstrated that filial piety is a cross-cultural construct that can be used with Hispanic/Latino populations. More refined development of the construct required testing with more homogeneous subsets (i.e. Mexican-Americans) within the broad designation of Hispanic/Latino adults.


METHODS
Non-experimental methodological design for field testing of the instrument's psychometric properties.


METHODS
A convenient sample of 80 Mexican-American adults in California and Texas completed a brief biographical survey and field tested the Expectations of Filial Piety Scale.


RESULTS
Common factor analysis with orthogonal rotation was used to extract three factors, which accounted for 58% of the variance in scale scores. These factors included: I: respect for parents (24.05%); II: honouring parents (12.5%); and III: family unity (16.56%). Overall scale reliability was 0.87 with individual factor reliability coefficients ranging from 0.74 to 0.87 and test-retest correlation was 0.73.


CONCLUSIONS
The results show that the Expectations of Filial Piety Scale is an internally consistent and reliable tool for use in studies of the Mexican-American population. Mexican elders historically underuse formal services; a large portion of this population will most likely depend on support from their family members when they reach advanced ages. There is a lack of culturally sensitive instruments to measure family values in caring for older adults in Mexican-Americans.


CONCLUSIONS
This scale can enable case workers and nurses in long-term care settings to assess the elder's expectations for family support accurately and compare these expectations with available family support, children's intentions to care for a dependent parent or other family member and the need for supplemental care in Mexican-American families.
Kao
Hsueh-Fen S
HF
School of Nursing, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA. sabrina.kao@alumni.utexas.net
McHugh
Mary L
ML
Travis
Shirley S
SS
D000328:Adult; D032721:Adult Children / Q000208:ethnology; D000368:Aged / Q000523:psychology; D001294:Attitude to Health / Q000208:ethnology*; D002140:California; D017028:Caregivers; D004645:Empathy; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016901:Intergenerational Relations / Q000208:ethnology*; D008297:Male; D017058:Mexican Americans / Q000208:ethnology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D009730:Nursing Assessment / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards; D015403:Nursing Evaluation Research; D015404:Nursing Methodology Research; D011594:Psychometrics; D012944:Social Support; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards*; D013781:Texas; D014175:Translating