The Parental Stress Scale revisited: Rasch-based construct validity for Danish parents of children 2–18 years old with and without behavioral problems

Abstract

Background: Experiencing parental stress is common among parents of children of all ages and is elevated in families characterized by stressors such as poverty, mental health problems, and developmental problems. The Parental Stress Scale (PSS) is a short measure for the assessment of perceived stress resulting from being a parent. Methods: This study examines the construct validity and psychometric properties of the Danish PSS using Rasch and graphical loglinear Rasch models in a sample of parents of 2-18-year-old children with and without known behavior problems. We emphasized analyses of differential item functioning, to ascertain whether the scale yields unbiased scores for subgroups of parents. Results: The 18-item PSS did not fit the Rasch model or a graphical loglinear Rasch model. After dichotomizing item responses and eliminating items 2 and 11, we found the PSS to consist of two distinct subscales measuring parental stress and lack of parental satisfaction. For the total sample, the Parental Stress subscale fit a very complex graphical loglinear Rasch model with differential item functioning relative to parental education and whether children had behavior problems or not. The Lack of Parental Satisfaction subscale fit a simple graphical loglinear Rasch model with differential item functioning only relative to subsample. When dividing into subsamples of parents of children with and without behavior problems, the Parental Stress subscale fit a simple graphical loglinear Rasch model, though still with differential item functioning, while the Lack of Parental Satisfaction subscale fit the Rasch model in each subsample of parents. Both subscales performed best for parents of children with behavior problems. Conclusions: The PSS should be used in a 16-item version and scored as two subscales. The PSS appears better suited for use among parents of children with behavior problems than within a sample without any known difficulties.

Concordance within parent couples’ perception of parental stress symptoms among parents to 1-18-year-olds with physical or mental health problems

“…Parental stress level was divided into higher and lower stress. The cut point was the median cut sum score (median = 6) of the PS subscale with dichotomized items (strongly agree, agree and neither agree or disagree coded 1 vs. disagree and strongly disagree coded 0) as in Pontoppidan et al [ 59 ] and Nielsen et al [ 34 ]. Consequently, a score of six or above in the PS scale was defined as ‘high’ while ‘low’ was defined as a score below six.…”

“…ASD, autism, oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), and behavior problems and in a wide range of counties including USA, UK, Pakistan, Poland, Denmark, and Ireland. These studies of differences in mothers and fathers parental stress levels consistently find higher levels of parental stress in mothers compared to fathers [ 13 , 25 , 26 , 34 , 41 – 47 ]. This is supported by a meta-analysis of parental stress in families of children with ADHD, where mothers experience higher levels of parental stress than fathers do across the seven included studies [ 48 ].…”

“…When we found systematic difference within the couples’ responses on an item, mothers were in all cases more inclined to report a higher degree of parental stress compared to the fathers. This is in agreement with previous studies examining differences between parental stress in mothers and fathers of children with developmental disabilities [ 13 , 23 , 25 , 26 , 34 , 41 – 47 ]. The previous studies focus on the overall level of parental stress and compare mothers and fathers.…”

“…One later study has also suggested four subscales although with different distributions of items to the subscales [ 30 ]. However, most validation studies find that the PSS consists of two unidimensional scales: parental stress (PS) and lack of parental satisfaction (LPS) [ 32 , 34 , 36 , 59 ], which are consistent with Berry and Jones’ original division as this was in fact a further subdivision of the parental stress and parental satisfaction items. Common for all these studies was that at least one item (item 2: There is little or nothing I wouldn’t do for my child(ren) if it was necessary ) was eliminated.…”

“…The targeting of the PS subscale to the study populations was excellent in both studies, while the targeting of the LPS subscale was poor. Consequently, in this study we use only the PS subscale items, excluding the problematic item 11 in accordance with the findings of Pontoppidan et al [ 59 ] and Nielsen et al [ 34 ]. In a sample of parents of 2–18 year-olds with behavior problems, Nielsen et al (2020) reported reliabilities of 0.71 and 0.72 depending on educational background of the parents [ 34 ].…”