Increasing interest in measuring parenting styles, especially with the Parenting Style and Dimensions Questionnaire, has emerged in the last 17 years. However, a critical review of studies using this instrument to assess parenting styles has not been done. The present article proposes an extensive review of studies that applied the instrument, focusing in particular on the different uses of the scale, its psychometric properties, and its association with other constructs. A discussion about the applicability, measurement reliability and validity of the instrument is provided.

Comparative research on parenting styles among Nordic and Mediterranean countries is still missing, despite the increasing number of studies on parenting styles in adolescence. This study explores similarities and differences in adolescents’ retrospective perceptions of parenting styles, for both parents, in Sweden, Italy and Greece, using the Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire. In particular, it examines the relation between parental role, adolescent gender, country of origin, SES and these perceptions. Swedish, Italian and Greek adolescents (N = 702; 30.9% Swedish, 39.6% Italian and 29.5% Greek) participated in the study. To test the principal effects three mixed 2(parent; mother and father)*2(gender; girl and boy)*3(countries; Sweden, Italy and Greece)*3(SES; low, medium and high) ANOVAs were conducted separately for each parenting style. To verify the interaction effects, a mixed 2(parent; mother and father)*3(countries; Sweden, Italy and Greece)*3(SES; low, medium and high) ANOVA was tested on authoritative style. Regarding authoritarian and permissive two mixed 2(parent; mother and father)*2(gender; girl and boy)*3(countries; Sweden, Italy and Greece) ANOVAs were tested. Mothers, as compared to fathers, were perceived as more authoritative, authoritarian and permissive. Moreover, boys perceived their parents as more authoritarian and more permissive than girls. Swedish parents were perceived as significantly less authoritarian than Italian and Greek parents and more permissive than Italian parents; Greek parents were perceived as less authoritarian and more permissive than Italian parents. The study provides an interesting contribution to parenting styles literature, showing how country legislation concerning family matters and SES are related the perception of parenting behaviours.

The malleable nature of the self led researchers to investigate the meaning of virtual identity by exploring virtual self-representation through avatars and its association with users’ identity. The present study aims to investigate the changes in virtual body-representation in adolescence related to age levels and sex and the association with adolescents’ self-esteem and body esteem. Anthropometric features, body esteem and self-esteem were used to assess adolescents’ body image and identity. The scoring code of the “Drawing Me” graphical test was used to evaluate the avatars. The sample is composed of 63 adolescents of different ages—early, middle and late adolescence—balanced by sex. Results show that the creation of a digital avatar changes with age and is partially associated with adolescents’ perceptions in terms of body esteem and self-esteem. Moreover, the creation of avatars occurs differently for boys, who enrich their avatars with many sexual features, than for girls, who prefer to detail their avatars’ clothing to enrich them. Critical reflections and implications for psychological interventions that may use avatars to investigate adolescents’ identity in integration with other tools will be discussed.

Puberty is a very important process for adolescents. Physiological changes and body modifications lead to great vulnerability. This vulnerability is connected to the adolescent’s perceptions of the uncertainty of outcomes due to the transformation of their infant body into an adult one. This cross-sectional study aims to better understand whether body image perception and satisfaction influence self-esteem in a sample of Italian male and female adolescents. A total of 242 adolescents (120 male and 122 female individuals) aged 11 to 17 years (M= 13.33;SD= 1.7) completed the study measures. Quantitative and qualitative instruments were used. In particular, adolescents completed self-report questionnaires to assess their pubertal status (Pubertal Developmental Scale, Peterson, Crockett, Richards, & Boxer, 1988), their body esteem (Body Esteem Scale, Mendelson, Mendelson, & White, 2001), their body image (Body Image Satisfaction Questionnaire, Rauste-von Wright, 1989), and their self-esteem (Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, Rosenberg,1965). Adolescent were also invited to depict themselves to assess their body representations by completing the Drawing Me test (Confalonieri, 2011). Results from MANOVAs confirm that gender and age are two factors that influence body image perception and satisfaction. SEM analyses show that good self-esteem is reached through good body satisfaction following different trajectories in male and female individuals. Data from adolescents’ body representations obtained via drawings confirm that females are more concerned about their body changes and about the appearance of secondary sexual features than males. This research, stressing the influence of various individual factors and highlighting the psychological distress and dissatisfaction of adolescents, especially females, confirms the importance of studying this topic in order to generate preventive measures to help adolescents through this developmental task.

The paper analyzes the psychometric properties of the G1 version of the Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire, a self-report instrument designed to investigate how adolescents or adults were parented during childhood. The sample included 1451 Italian adolescents in high school. Three studies tested the scale's structure, invariance, and convergent validity. The first found slightly acceptable fit indexes for a 40-item scale measuring three factors (authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive styles); the factors presented good reliability (ρc .62-.96). Multigroup confirmative analyses found factor loadings invariant in the father version, whereas 12 items resulted not invariant in the mother version (second study). Good convergent validity was found with the Parental Bonding Index and the Parental Monitoring Scale (third study). Discussion of results is provided within the parenting styles literature.

The assessment of body image in adolescence plays a key role in investigating self-esteem development and social adjustment. In particular, these days, adolescents use more and more online tools to communicate with other people, and virtual body image represents a critical aspect for understanding the avatar development. This study aims at investigating the virtual body representation by using the “Drawing Me” graphical test with a group of Italian adolescents. Specifically, we compared body image representation in real (drawings) and virtual (avatar) life by taking gender differences into consideration. Results show that virtual body representation is more characterized by the sexual features related to body, face, and clothes and by a major number of context elements than real body representation. Gender differences confirm that girls tend to represent themselves in greater detail than boys and their avatars are rich with sexual characters. To conclude, our study illustrates that the Drawing Me test is an effective tool that analyzes the virtual body representation in an unobtrusive way, and intervention implications are discussed.