Assessment of parental discipline in daily life.

The use of ecological momentary assessment (EMA) for studying parenting has been rare. We examined the psychometric properties and structural validity of an EMA Parenting Scale based on 32 mothers' reports of their parenting over a period of 10 consecutive days, and explored the acceptance of the scale and compliance with the procedure. The results suggested that the EMA Parenting Scale was well accepted for the assessment of daily parenting, and that it consistently captured the overreactive and lax dimensions of parenting across different episodes of child misbehavior. Moreover, multilevel analyses suggested that the scale was sensitive to change across different parenting episodes, and that it reliably assessed the dimensions at both the personal and situational levels.