A Scale of Parent-to-Child Emotions (SPCE): Development and validation of a short form.

Abstract

Parents' emotions towards a child are extremely important. The Scale of Parent-to-Child Emotions (SPCE) consists of five basic and four self-conscious emotion domains for assessment of parental emotional states. Abridgement of the SPCE is needed for research and clinical settings. Our previous investigational data for SPCE development were used in this study. The sample of 2336 fathers and 2264 mothers, whose eldest child's age was up to 12 years old, was analyzed. Total information for each pair (form) of items corresponding to a latent trait (θ) was calculated. The form with the greatest amount of total information was selected as the best for each domain. In addition, relative efficiency for each form and correlations of raw sum scores in classical test theory (CTT) for short forms with factor scores in item response theory (IRT) were calculated. The SPCE was shortened to 18 items by selecting two items each for nine domains. Correlations of raw sum scores in CTT for short forms with factor scores in IRT were correlated strongly and significantly. This abridged form of the scale, the SPCE-18, may be applicable in a busy clinical setting or research works to investigate the trajectory of parent-to-child emotions across a long span of time.