McLean Rebecca K, Roach Alex, Tully Lucy, Dadds Mark R
4334The University of Sydney, Sydney, AU-NSW, Australia.
Clin Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2023 Apr;28(2):417-433. doi: 10.1177/13591045221076644. Epub 2022 Feb 8.
Time-out (TO) is a widely used parental discipline strategy with strong research support in programmes that promote positive child development. Concerns have been raised, however, regarding adverse impact on child mental health (CMH) in part driven by evidence of widespread variability in appropriate implementation. There are no existing measures of TO. We present the first measure of procedural implementation of TO in a community sample of parents of children aged 6-8 years.
A nationally representative sample ( = 474) of parents completed a survey on the implementation of TO, parent-child relationships, and emotional and behavioural difficulties. The scale of TO use was used to test the convergent validity between TO implementation and parenting practices/family adjustment and CMH.
Consistent with international research, >70% of parents have used TO with their children. There was high variability in the levels of appropriate implementation of TO. Scale reliability (Cronbach's alpha) was acceptable and tests of convergent validity indicated that as expected, less appropriate implementation of TO was associated with worse CMH and poorer parenting and family adjustment.
The current findings suggest that the scale is a psychometrically sound instrument for measuring the appropriate procedural implementation of TO with young children.
暂停（TO）是一种广泛使用的父母管教策略，在促进儿童积极发展的项目中有强有力的研究支持。然而，人们对其对儿童心理健康（CMH）的不利影响表示担忧，部分原因是有证据表明在适当实施方面存在广泛差异。目前尚无衡量暂停的方法。我们提出了第一项针对6至8岁儿童家长社区样本中暂停程序实施情况的衡量方法。
一个具有全国代表性的家长样本（n = 474）完成了一项关于暂停实施、亲子关系以及情绪和行为问题的调查。使用暂停使用量表来检验暂停实施与养育方式/家庭适应及儿童心理健康之间的收敛效度。
与国际研究一致，超过70%的家长对孩子使用过暂停。暂停的适当实施水平存在很大差异。量表信度（克朗巴哈α系数）可以接受，收敛效度测试表明，正如预期的那样，暂停实施不太适当与较差的儿童心理健康、较差的养育方式和家庭适应有关。
目前的研究结果表明，该量表是一种在心理测量学上可靠的工具，可用于测量对幼儿适当实施暂停的情况。
