Perceived parental rearing behaviours: a confirmatory factor analytic study of the Dutch EMBU for children

The Egna Minnen Betraffande Uppfostran for Children (EMBU-C; Castro et al., 1993) is a short 34-item questionnaire that intends to measure children and adolescentsʹ perception of three main aspects of parental rearing behaviour: Emotional Warmth, Rejection and Overprotection. However, in the literature, there is circumstantial evidence that the EMBU-C can best be regarded as a 2-factor instrument measuring Positive Rearing Behaviours and Negative Rearing Behaviours. To examine what factor structure is most satisfactory, confirmatory factor analyses were carried out on EMBU-C data of two independent samples of Dutch school children (N = 929 and N = 416). These analyses consistently revealed that the original 3-factor model provides a better fit than the 2-factor model.