Development and validation of a parenting assessment tool for Chinese parents

The objective of this study was to develop a parenting assessment tool (PAT) for parents of children aged 3 to 6 years to assess parenting attitudes and skills within the Chinese socio-cultural context.

Focus group discussions were used to gather information for composing the PAT test items. Factor analysis was performed to build and refine the factor structure of PAT. Ten cities included in a larger programme, the Early Childhood Development Promotion Project carried out by the Capital Institute of Pediatrics in China, were chosen as the study area. Six hundred and twelve parents and their single children were chosen from those 10 cities by convenience sampling for the large-scale investigation of PAT, and the results were used to test and validate the psychometric properties of PAT.

The internal consistency of total PAT scores was 0.87, and those of the eight subscales ranged from 0.53 to 0.79. Test-retest reliability over 2 weeks was also significant for the total scores and all subscales (range: 0.68-0.89). For the factor structure, an eight-factor solution accounting for 65.54% of the variance was most consistently fit. Concurrent validity was supported by significant positive correlations between total PAT scores and children's language ability, sociability and adaptive ability as assessed by the Developmental Diagnostic Scale of Children Aged 0-6 Years.

The newly devised PAT test is a reliable instrument to assess the parenting skills and attitudes of parents of young children in urban China.