Development and initial validation of the Parent-Child War-Dialogue Scale (PACWAD)

This study introduces the Parent-Child War-Dialogue Scale, which assesses parents' dialogue style, content, and frequency in the context of coexperienced ongoing war.

We employed an iterative, systematic mixed methods approach to scale development, including item generation guided by a literature review, expert review, qualitative analysis of open-ended questions, and a test pilot with 137 Israeli caregivers during an ongoing war. This was followed by creating an improved version of the Parent-Child War-Dialogue Scale and a second survey with 372 caregivers of children aged 6-12 years to assess its psychometric properties.

Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported a three-factor model of war-related dialogue styles: modulated disclosure, silencing, and unfiltered speech. This structure demonstrated strong psychometric properties, including acceptable-to-good internal consistency for all subscales, robust convergent validity with theoretically related measures of parent-child communication, and significant correlations with the dialogue content scales and parental perceived stress.

The Parent-Child War-Dialogue Scale is a feasible measure that promotes a more comprehensive and detailed understanding of parent-child conversations about war and supports further exploration of their contribution to children's adjustment during wartime. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).