Validating parent and child forms of the Parent Perception Inventory.

Abstract

Understanding parenting from both parent and child perspectives is critical to child clinical and developmental research. Similarities and differences between parents' and children's reports can be highly informative, but only if they derive from psychometrically sound measures that assess the same parenting constructs. We examined the psychometric properties of the child and parent forms of the Parenting Perception Inventory (Bruce et al., 2006), which measures perceptions of two higher-order dimensions: positive, warm, supportive parenting; and negative, harsh, critical parenting. Data from a four-wave, longitudinal study of community children and adolescents (n = 876, Mage = 9.5 at the beginning), and data from a study of children (n = 131, Mage = 9.35) of depressed and nondepressed mothers provided psychometric support for both measures. Factor analyses revealed the existence of two factors in both the child and parent forms, and showed strong congruence across the two forms. Other analyses examined longitudinal structure, item difficulty, item discriminations, and scale coverage of the child form. Parents' and children's perceptions of parenting were related to children's affect, emotionality, and depressive symptoms. Parents' perceptions of parenting were related to parents' depressive symptoms and to parenting self-efficacy. (PsycINFO Database Record