Child-Rearing Authoritarianism Measure
Also known as: Child-Rearing Values Authoritarianism Scale, Feldman-Stenner Authoritarianism Items, Parenting-Values Authoritarianism Measure, Four-Item Child-Rearing Authoritarianism Battery
The child-rearing values measure, introduced by Stanley Feldman and Karen Stenner in 1997, gauges an authoritarian predisposition indirectly by asking which qualities respondents most want to instill in children. Each item forces a choice between an autonomy-oriented quality (such as independence or curiosity) and a conformity-oriented quality (such as obedience or good manners). Because the questions never mention politics, the resulting four-item index measures a deep disposition toward order and sameness without contaminating it with the political attitudes it is meant to explain, avoiding the tautology that plagued earlier authoritarianism scales.
Key highlights
- Separates the authoritarian disposition from political content, avoiding the circularity of direct attitude batteries.
- Compact four-item format fits easily on general-population surveys, including the ANES.
- Grounds a powerful threat-activation theory linking disposition to intolerance and ethnocentrism.
- Politically neutral wording reduces social-desirability and partisan-priming concerns.
Intuition
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How it works
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When to use it
Use the child-rearing measure when you need a predisposition toward authoritarianism that is causally prior to, and not confounded with, the political attitudes you are explaining, such as intolerance, ethnocentrism, immigration opinion, or support for coercive policy. It is ideal for threat-activation models and for survey settings where direct authoritarianism items would be tautological or socially sensitive. It is less suitable when you specifically want to measure expressed authoritarian aggression or submission (use a direct scale like RWA), when comparing across racial or cultural groups without prior invariance testing, or when the forced-choice format cannot be accommodated.
Strengths & limitations
- Separates the authoritarian disposition from political content, avoiding the circularity of direct attitude batteries.
- Compact four-item format fits easily on general-population surveys, including the ANES.
- Grounds a powerful threat-activation theory linking disposition to intolerance and ethnocentrism.
- Politically neutral wording reduces social-desirability and partisan-priming concerns.
- Cross-racial and cross-cultural measurement equivalence is weak, limiting group comparisons.
- Parenting values are a proxy; the inferred disposition may capture culture or religiosity rather than authoritarianism per se.
- Forced-choice items can frustrate respondents who value both qualities, adding measurement noise.
- The construct's predictive power depends heavily on the threat-interaction specification, which is not always supported.
Common pitfalls
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Applications
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Frequently asked
Why ask about child-rearing instead of politics directly?
Direct authoritarianism items overlap so much with conservative attitudes that using them to explain those attitudes is circular. Child-rearing values tap the same underlying preference for order and conformity in a domain that does not mention politics, yielding a disposition that can sit causally prior to political opinions. This independence lets researchers test whether authoritarianism shapes intolerance and policy views rather than merely restating them.
What is the role of threat in this measure?
Feldman and Stenner argue that the disposition is latent until normative or physical threat activates it. In their models, high-authoritarian respondents become markedly more intolerant and punitive when threat is high, while low-authoritarians may even react in the opposite direction. The interaction between the child-rearing index and a threat measure, rather than the disposition's main effect alone, is what carries the theory, so analyses should specify and interpret that interaction.
Does the scale work the same way across racial and cultural groups?
Not reliably. Perez and Hetherington show that the child-rearing items do not exhibit strong measurement equivalence across racial groups in the United States, meaning observed differences may reflect how the construct is measured rather than true differences in authoritarianism. Researchers comparing groups should test invariance with item-response or multigroup factor models before interpreting differences in means or effects.
Sources
- 1.Feldman, S., & Stenner, K. (1997). Perceived Threat and Authoritarianism. Political Psychology, 18(4), 741-770.
- 2.Perez, E. O., & Hetherington, M. J. (2014). Authoritarianism in Black and White: Testing the Cross-Racial Validity of the Child Rearing Scale. Political Analysis, 22(3), 398-412.
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Cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 23). Child-Rearing Authoritarianism Measure. ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/political-psychology/child-rearing-authoritarianism