Doherty, Karen Jo Weinberg; (2025) Feeling Listened To by Parents: Conceptualisation, Measure Creation and Relationship with Young People’s Outcomes. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

Text Doherty_10205985_Thesis.pdf Access restricted to UCL open access staff until 1 April 2026. Download (3MB)

Abstract

Research had identified a link between feeling listened to by parents and young people’s wellbeing (Rees et al., 2012). However, little was known about the nature of feeling listened to by parents and its relationship with young people’s outcomes. This thesis explored the construct of feeling listened to by parents and created a measure for its assessment. The research included three interconnected studies investigating young peoples’ (11-19 years) perceptions and experiences of feeling listened to by parents. Study 1 incorporated qualitative research to inform the understanding of young people’s perceptions of feeling listened to by parents and thematic analysis to generate an initial question item pool for scale creation. Study 2 used a cross-sectional design and principal component analysis to initiate early-stage psychometric analysis of the question items. The research led to the creation of a unifactorial 15-item measure of feeling listened to by parents. Correlational analyses indicated a positive relationship between feeling listened to by parents and young people’s wellbeing and a longitudinal component assessed scale stability over one year. Study 3 used a cross-sectional design and confirmatory factor analysis to confirm the measure’s psychometric properties. Correlational analyses identified significant positive relationships between feeling listened to by parents and young people’s outcomes including attachment, family relationships, wellbeing and self-esteem, and a longitudinal component assessed test-retest reliability five weeks later. The eight-item unifactorial stable reliable and apparently valid Feeling Listened To Scale (FLTS) was created, enabling purposeful research into feeling listened to by parents to commence. In practice, the FLTS may help as a clinical screening tool for families in need or an outcome measure to assess the impact of working with parents and young people. This research indicated the efficacy of further research into the measure’s psychometric properties, generalisability and a potential causal relationship between feeling listened to by parents and young people’s outcomes.

Download activity - last month

Export as XMLCSVJSON

Download activity - last 12 months

Export as JSONXMLCSV

Downloads by country - last 12 months

Export as JSONCSVXML

Archive Staff Only

View Item