Development and Validation of a Parenting Scale Short Form (PS-8) in a Representative Population Sample

Early mental and behavioral disorders are significant predictors of psychopathologies in adulthood. Parenting behavior (e.g., overreactivity and laxness) influences the development of behavioral problems in children. It is thus often assessed in therapeutic settings, as well as in the context of intervention studies. The aim of this study was to develop a short form of the Parenting Scale (PS), PS-8, and to evaluate its psychometric properties. Based on data from a large pre-school survey, an eight-item short form scale was compiled. The short version was presented to a large representative population sample (N = 539 parents, n = 312 mothers, n = 227 fathers). Psychometric properties were assessed and measurement invariance tests performed. The internal consistency of both PS-8 subscales as well as the mean score were satisfactory. Strict measurement invariance could be confirmed for parental age, gender and age*gender interaction, as well as for the child’s age, gender, and gender*age interaction, allowing unbiased comparison of means, correlation coefficients, path coefficients as well as undistorted screening decisions between the aforementioned groups. Furthermore, the PS-8 mean score was associated with self-rating measures of related constructs (parental anxiety and depression). Hence, the PS-8 presents a reliable, valid and economical tool to assess dysfunctional parenting behavior and can thus be effectively applied within the frameworks of clinical studies, epidemiological research, or related research areas. In future research the convergent validity of the PS-8 with child behavior questionnaires should be assessed.