Poster #78 - Parental Psychological Control and Child Anxiety: A Meta-Analysis

• In Event: Poster Session 18

Abstract

Parental behaviors have long been considered in etiological models of child psychopathology. Since the publication of Barber’s (1996) seminal work, which demonstrated that parental psychological control predicts child internalizing symptoms, numerous investigations have shown significant associations between parental psychological control behavior and child anxiety symptoms (e.g., Kunz & Grych, 2013; Rudolph & Zimmer-Gembeck, 2014). However, meta-analyses of the associations between parental psychological control and child anxiety have raised concerns regarding the measurement of psychological control (McLeod et al., 2007; Pinquart, 2017; Van der Bruggen et al., 2008). Specifically, these researchers argue that existing studies of psychological control and child anxiety use inconsistent operational definitions of psychological control. Other researchers have called for further investigation of psychological control using more rigorous methods and definitions (Barber, 2002; McLeod, et al., 2007; Ollendick & Grills, 2016).

The current study conducted a meta-analysis of the literature spanning from 1990 to 2020 to estimate the effect of parental psychological control on child anxiety. The goal of this meta-analysis was to evaluate studies that assessed parental psychological control using the following definition of psychological control set forth by Barber (1996): “parenting practices that constrain, invalidate, and manipulate a child’s psychological and emotional experience and expression.” Barber (1996)’s definition of this construct was used as a universal standard for the measurement of psychological control in the current study, and potential studies were only included in this meta-analysis if their operationalization of psychological control was determined to match it after independent coding by three of the authors.

Searches of PsycINFO, PsycArticles, and Google Scholar resulted in identification of 41 studies of parental psychological control and child anxiety that met inclusion criteria (e.g., measured child anxiety and psychological control, used non-clinical samples, etc.). Questions about study eligibility and coding were resolved through group consensus. All analyses were conducted using the Metafor package in R version 4.0.2. The overall effect of parental psychological control on child anxiety was estimated at .22 (95% CI [.19, .25]), and a fail-safe N of 13,652 was calculated (meaning that 13,652 null studies would need to exist in the literature which were not considered in this meta-analysis in order to reduce the effect size to nonsignificance). Significant heterogeneity of variance was present (Q(40) = 183.41, p < .0001), suggesting the presence of one or more moderating variables. Moderators considered included year of publication, geographic location of the study’s data collection (coded as 0 for US, 1 for other), anxiety type (i.e., broadband anxiety or social anxiety), anxiety symptom reporter (i.e., parent or self-report), psychological control measure, child mean age, and child gender, but none were significant (ps = .13 to .81). Further analyses will be conducted, to consider possible moderation by average annual family income of the sample, family structure, psychological control reporter (i.e., parent vs. child), more precise geographic location of data collection (i.e., specific regions within the US, as determined by the US census), and race/ethnicity (US samples only). Potential implications of this meta-analysis for clinical work and future research will be discussed.

Authors

• Cassandra R. Mick, Northern Illinois University
  Presenting Author

• Sebastian Szollos, Northern Illinois University

• Jill R. Caradec, Northern Illinois University

• Nina S. Mounts, Northern Illinois University

• Laura D Pittman, Northern Illinois University

• David P. Valentiner