Homework-Related Parental Emotions Scale (PES-Home): Development, Validation, and Links to Personality Traits

Educational success is shaped by students’ social background, making parental support with homework particularly important for younger learners. Beyond instructional help, the emotional quality of this support may influence parent–child interactions and, in turn, students’ outcomes. However, little is known about the emotions that parents experience during homework support or how these emotions relate to parents’ personality traits. Therefore, the present study surveyed N = 903 parents (MAge = 42.40, SD = 5.60; 87.4% female, predominantly mothers) of sixth-grade students using the newly developed Homework-Related Parental Emotions Scale (PES-Home) to assess parents’ emotions during homework support. In addition, parents reported personality traits of openness and extraversion as well as further individual characteristics (gender, age, marital status, number of children at home, educational attainment, and weekly working hours). The results of the exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses indicate that the PES-Home scales exhibit sound psychometric properties and reliably capture the three emotions of enjoyment, anxiety, and anger. Bivariate correlations and findings of a path model reveal significant links between parents’ emotions and their openness, extraversion, and additional individual characteristics. Specifically, higher educational attainment, more children in the household, and longer working hours are each associated with less favorable emotional experiences during homework support. Our findings highlight that research on parental homework support is still at an early stage and requires further investigation.