Refinement and validation of the Parental Illness Impact Scale

Area of Science:

• Psychometrics
• Neuroscience
• Quality of Life Research

Background:

• Children of parents with neurological conditions face unique challenges impacting their quality of life.
• Existing measures may not fully capture the specific experiences of this population.

Purpose of the Study:

• To refine and validate the Parental Illness Impact Scale (PIIS) for assessing the quality of life of adolescent and adult children of neurologically affected parents.
• The revised instrument is named the PIIS-R.

Main Methods:

• The PIIS-R was developed using key informant interviews and literature review.
• Expert panel review, cognitive interviews, and psychometric analysis were performed on data from 169 participants.
• Participants were children of parents with Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, and stroke.

Main Results:

• Principal components analysis yielded eight subscales explaining 60.6% of the variance.
• The PIIS-R demonstrated good concurrent and discriminant validity.
• High internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = .92) and moderate to high test-retest reliability (r = .59–.79) were observed.

Conclusions:

• The PIIS-R is a scientifically robust tool with strong psychometric properties for evaluating the impact of parental illness.
• Further longitudinal data are needed to assess predictive validity and sensitivity to change.
• The PIIS-R is available for use by other researchers to further evaluate its scientific properties.