Development and Validation of the Media Motivations (MEMO) Scales for Children and Parents

The complex associations between child media use and development cannot be fully understood through screen time estimates alone. Parental motivations for media use are one of the factors that may shape the quality of media experiences and ultimately child development and family well-being. However, validated scales to capture parents’ motivations for their own and their children’s media use are lacking. Filling this gap, the current paper describes the development and validation of the Media Motivations for Children (MEMO-C) and Parents (MEMO-P) scales in a sample of 521 parents with young children (2-5 years old). The scales were designed to capture regulatory and relational aspects of child and parent media use. Factor analyses revealed a three-factor structure for each scale (MEMO-C: Regulate, Occupy, and Connect; MEMO-P: Regulate, Relax Alone, and Connect). These factors demonstrated strong psychometric properties including high reliability as well as convergent and incremental validity in predicting child- and parent-related constructs above and beyond screen time estimates and related demographic information. By measuring parental media motivations through a relational lens, these scales enable researchers to more closely examine how family media use is associated with child development and family members’ well-being.