Jordanian children's perception of fathers' communication structures and patterns: scales revision and validation

Abstract: Purpose – Based on father-child dyadic responses, this paper is aimed at revising and validating the scales of fathers' communication structures, identifying Jordanian fathers' communication structures and patterns.

Design/methodology/approach – Based on two different studies, group interviews face-to-face, self-administered questionnaires and drop-off self-administered questionnaires were respectively employed to solicit young children's and fathers' responses. While the first study (n=100) depended on convenience sampling procedures, proportionate stratified random sampling technique that relied on young children of ages 8-12 was conducted to select the participants of the second study (n=916). Fathers' consent on the participation of their young children in the group interviews was obtained before collecting data.

Findings – Children of ages 8-12 can precisely perceive family communication patterns (FCP) as adolescents and mothers. The influence of culture on fathers' communication structures and patterns is not clear. Jordanian fathers are principally classified as pluralistic fathers in their communication related to consumption issues and there is significant association between fathers' consumer socialisation goals and their communication structures and patterns.

Research limitations/implications – The development of fathers' communication dimensions was based on a single-country study and the two research samples were restricted to the public schools of Amman metropolitan.

Practical implications – Marketers can directly target Jordanian children in their advertising campaigns since children are more likely to make their own purchasing decisions. The marketers may focus on young children in their promotion campaigns to influence the family decision making related to products and services since their fathers adopt concept-oriented communication structures.

Originality/value – An important contribution of this study is that neither fathers' communication structures nor young children's perceptions were previously used in revising and validating the scales of family communication structures and patterns at the level of collectivistic or individualistic cultures.

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Al-Zu'bi