Abstract

The purpose of this study was to improve the low internal consistency of two sub-scales of the Korean-Parental Overprotection Scale (K-POS), namely ‘face culture’ and ‘identification’, and to validate the revised scale for both high school and college students. In the fist step of the study, an initial pool of 29 items was developed through a literature review, focus group interviews, and content validity evaluations. The K-POS-2, consisting of 15 items with a four-factor structure (achievement orientation, control, face culture, and identification), was confirmed through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses with 880 high school students. Secondly, the validation of K-POS-2 was extended by conducting multi-group confirmatory factor analysis on a sample of 993 college students. The findings from this analysis further supported the measurement equivalence of the scales between the high school student group and the college student group. The K-POS-2 was also examined for convergent and discriminant validities and test-retest reliability with a sample of 100 high school students and 100 college students. The results showed that the K-POS-2 had a high correlation with the Parental Bonding Instrument (Parker et al., 1979) and another Korean cultural-specific overprotection scale, while exhibiting low correlations with scales that measured general parenting behaviors. These findings suggest that the K-POS-2 has been significantly improved in terms of its psychometric properties and usefulness compared to the original scale. The limitations and recommendations for future research were also discussed.