Shame and guilt scales for fathers of children with developmental disabilities: Development and validation

Abstract Shame and guilt are powerful moral emotions that profoundly influence how fathers perceive themselves and engage with their children, particularly when raising a child with a developmental disability. Yet brief, culturally attuned measures assessing these emotions in this population remain scarce. Guided by established distinctions between shame and guilt and informed by contemporary fatherhood models, we employed a sequential mixed-methods design to develop and validate the Shame Scale and Guilt Scale for Chinese fathers of children with developmental disabilities. Item pools derived from hermeneutic interviews with 31 fathers were refined through expert review and cognitive pre-testing. A community sample of 437 fathers of children aged 2–12 years completed the draft scales and demographic items. The dataset was randomly split for exploratory (n = 219) and confirmatory (n = 218) factor analyses. Two-factor solutions emerged for each scale: shame comprised internal inadequacy and public devaluation; guilt comprised cognitive wrongdoing and emotional remorse. Confirmatory models demonstrated satisfactory fit (CFI and TLI>.93, RMSEA < .08, SRMR < .05) and high reliability ( α = .89 for shame, α = .88 for guilt). These findings contribute to understanding how moral emotions shape paternal involvement within the cultural context of Chinese families navigating developmental disabilities. The validated scales offer reliable tools for advancing research and informing interventions aimed at supporting father-child relationships and family well-being.