Assessing Children’s Emotional Security in the Interparental Relationship: The Security in the Interparental Subsystem Scales

Abstract

Guided by the emotional security hypothesis, this study reports on the development of a new self-report measure that assesses children's strategies for preserving emotional security in the context of interparental conflict. Participants were 924 sixth, seventh, and eighth graders and a subset of their mothers, fathers, and teachers. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of the Security in the Interparental Subsystem (SIS) Scale supported a seven-factor solution, corresponding well to the three component processes (i.e., emotional reactivity, regulation of exposure to parent affect, and internal representations) outlined in the emotional security hypothesis. The SIS subscales demonstrated satisfactory internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Support for the validity of the SIS Scale is evidenced by its significant links with parent reports of children's overt reactivity to conflict, children's responses to interparental conflict simulations 6 months later, and children's psychological maladjustment and experiential histories with interparental conflict across multiple informants (i.e., child, mother, father, and teacher). Results are discussed in the context of developing recommendations for use of the SIS and advancing the emotional security hypothesis.

Marital psychological and physical aggression and children's mental and physical health: Direct, mediated, and moderated effects.

“…Cronbach's alphas for mothers' and fathers' reports were .58 and .87, respectively, for the Emotional Reactivity scale and .69 and .77, respectively, for the Behavioral Dysregulation scale. There were no significant differences between mothers' and fathers' reports of their child on either of these scales, and a composite was created for each subscale by summing mothers' and fathers' reports.Children completed the Security in the Interparental Subsystem Scale (SIS; Davies, Forman, et al, 2002) via experimenter interview. Children rated their perceptions of events that occurred during the past year on a 4-point scale, ranging from 1 (not at all true for me) to 4 (very true for me).…”

Interparental conflict and child adjustment: main concepts and research findings

“…flict had higher intense internalizing and externalizing problems (Davies & Cummings, 1998;Davies, Forman, Rasi & Stevens, 2002). Negative emotionality and damaging parental conflict tactics were related with in-4.…”

“…Davies, Forman, Rasi, & Stevens, 2002;Harold, Shelton, Goeke-Morey, & Cummings, 2004), and (2) children's perceptions of threat and self-blame are associated with internalizing behavior problems (Grych, Seid & Fincham, 1992;Grych, Fincham, Jouriles & McDonald, 2000;Kinsfogel & Grych, 2004). A synthetic account that has selected research results in this fi eld is presented in Table 1.…”

The perception of adolescents’ inter-parental conflict and accompanied emotional security: A descriptive study

“…The "Children's perception of interparental conflict scale (CPIC)" [26] and the "Security in the inter-parental system scale (SISS)" were used for data collection along with a demographic data sheet. [27] Permission to use the SISS and the CPIC were obtained from Davies, Forman et al (2002) and Grych et al (1992). [26,27] Both questionnaires were translated to Arabic by a professional independent researcher and back translations were conducted to ensure data did not lose its richness and meaning.…”