Consuming kids: testing a dichotomous scale for measuring children’s material values

Abstract

This study aims to test a dichotomous scale for measuring children’s material values. Research into childhood consumer behaviour has taken a keen interest into the materialism values of children. Studies have sought to understand how materialism develops in children, the material values that children hold and the effects of materialism on children’s well-being. Other studies have sought to investigate the ways in which childhood materialism can be measured. Many of the studies investing children’s materialism have adopted the Material Values Scale for children (MVS-c), which is in a Likert scale format. However, studies on child consumers have shown that younger children struggle to express their attitudes using Likert type questions. This research examines the material values of tween consumers using an adapted Material Values Scale. The aim of the study was to assess the validity and reliability of a dichotomised version of the MVS-c. The dichotomised scale was generated by collapsing the four response categories into a binary response scale. This methodological study uses a 12-item, yes/no response instrument to obtain data from 192 school children. The data was subjected to factor analysis, Kuder-Richardson (KR) 20, item total correlation and structural equation modelling. Factor loadings for the items varied between 0.24 and 0.69, with an acceptable KR-20 value of 0.708 for the scale. While the study confirmed the second-order material values structure, the weak factor loadings, compared to those obtained using Likert scales, suggest that dichotomous questions are not the most reliable for measuring children’s material values. The findings of this study have implications for research with children.