Validity of the Parenting Stress Index Short Form in a Sample of At-Risk Mothers

The Parenting Stress Index Short Form (PSI-SF) is a widely used instrument in scientific literature to evaluate the levels of stress a parent feels when facing parenting-related tasks. Despite the potential usefulness of the PSI-SF with at-risk families, no validation studies have been carried out on this population in Spain.

The main objective of this study is to report evidences of the reliability and validity of PSI-SF with a sample of at-risk mothers. Specifically, (1) to examine the discriminative capacity of PSI-SF to differentiate between a community sample and another sample composed of families with various levels of risk and (2) to analyze the relationships with general health indicators and parental sense of competence.

Analyses reported in this article show satisfactory results regarding appropriate internal consistency coefficients for the scale. With respect to the evidences of validity, results reported here suggest that the total PSI-SF score, but not the two subscales, could be useful to differentiate between different groups of mothers with different levels of risk. The Childrearing stress subscale was associated with a poorer perception as a mother as well as with an external locus of control, and the Personal distress subscale was related to all the general health indicators, explaining a high percentage of variance.

The results reported show that the total score or the subscales should be used in a differentiated way according to the professional's objectives. Hence, PSI-SF may be a useful instrument for researchers and practitioners who work with at-risk families.