Psychometric properties of the Parenting Stress Index-Short Form (PSI-SF) in a high-risk sample of mothers and their infants.

Abstract

The goal of the present study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the English and Spanish versions of the Parenting Stress Index-Short Form (PSI-SF) with mothers of 12- to 15-month-old infants with elevated levels of behavior problems and from predominately Hispanic, low-income backgrounds. Mothers of 58 infants were assessed as part of a larger study examining a brief home-based intervention for infants with elevated behavior problems. Internal consistency was good for all three subscales (i.e., Parental Distress, Parent-Child Dysfunctional Interaction, and Difficult Child) and the Total Stress scale. Convergent validity of subscales was supported by correlations with measures of theoretically related constructs, including maternal depressive symptoms, maternal parenting practices, and infant behavior. Furthermore, examination of the optimal clinical cutoff by examining sensitivity and specificity suggested that for this high-risk sample lower percentile scores (73rd – 77th), relative to the published 85th percentile cutoff, were sufficient for identifying mothers with clinically elevated depressive symptoms and infants with clinically elevated behavioral and emotional difficulties. The current results provide psychometric support for the PSI-SF as an effective and appropriate measure for use with high-risk families that have been underrepresented in previous research, including mothers of very young children with behavior problems, Hispanic and Spanish-speaking populations, and low-income families.

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“…This 36-item scale includes three domains: parental distress (PD), parent–child dysfunctional interaction (P–CDI), and difficult child (DC) that when combined form a total stress scale. Available in Spanish, previous reports indicate strong reliability coefficients (Barroso et al 2016 ). Reliability coefficients of the scores in the current study ranged from 0.88 to 0.89.…”

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“…The stress level within the family was measured by the German short version of the well‐validated and internationally established Parenting Stress Index (PSI) . It uses 67 items to describe the interactional burden and the emotional well‐being of parents in the family.…”

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“…In the absence of “standard”, which could be used as a basis for establishing a cut-off point for young children in an epidemiological study of the community sample, we used 85th percentile as a borderline to assess young children mental difficulties in this epidemiological study, and assessed the prevalence of children mental difficulties in the three exposure (parent-child relations) groups: normal—scores below the 85th percentile, borderline—the 85th to 90th percentile, and pathological parent-child relations—scores above the 90th percentile. Scores above the 85th percentile are considered to be borderline clinically significant [ 19 , 20 ].…”