Gender-inclusive, culturally sensitive validation of the parental self-efficacy to respond to school refusal

This letter responds to the recent article by Cardamone-Breen et al. (2025), which introduced the Parental Self-Efficacy to Respond to School Refusal Scale (PSES-SR). Their study provided the first rigorously validated task-related measure of parental self-efficacy in addressing adolescent school refusal and established an important psychometric benchmark through confirmatory factor analysis, concurrent and convergent validity, and strong internal consistency. While commendable, several limitations require attention to strengthen its global relevance. These include the predominance of highly educated mothers in the sample, the absence of test-retest reliability, reliance on parental self-report, and the exclusive Australian context. To maximize its utility, future research should broaden recruitment to include fathers and caregivers from diverse socio-educational backgrounds and incorporate adolescent and teacher perspectives to mitigate self-report bias, recognizing that informant discrepancies provide meaningful insights. Moreover, applying Rasch measurement theory can enhance psychometric precision, evaluate response scale functioning, and detect differential item functioning across gender and cultural groups. Taken together, integrating Rasch analysis, father-inclusive recruitment, and cross-cultural validation in low- and middle-income countries represents a critical next step to ensure that the PSES-SR evolves from a context-specific tool into a globally equitable, gender-sensitive, and culturally responsive instrument capable of guiding international interventions for school refusal.