Comparing online versus in-person codability of the Parent Child Interaction Teaching Scale (PCITS)

The Parent-Child Interaction Teaching Scale (PCITS) is a gold standard observational measure of parent-child interaction quality. Despite the increasing delivery of virtual family services, the codability of online PCITS assessments remains unstudied. This exploratory study compared the ease of codability of online Zoom™ and in-person PCITS videorecordings. The specific objectives were to: (1) compare codability between online and in-person PCITS videorecordings and (2) examine whether codability differed in subgroups based on child age, maternal age, depressive symptom score at screening, and maternal place of birth (born in Canada or not).

Employing PCITS videorecordings from a randomized controlled trial (VID-KIDS) targeting mothers with postpartum depressive symptoms (age = 32.31 years, 71.4% born in Canada) and their children (age = 13.31 months, 53% female), codability of online Zoom™ (n = 109) versus in-person (n = 109) assessments was determined with a specially designed tool reflecting seven PCITS components (i.e., Videorecording Quality, Audio Quality, Child Face, Child Body, Parent Face, Parent Body, Task Materials). Two-sample t-tests and ANOVAs were used to compare PCITS assessment approaches.

Of the seven codability components, only the Parent Body item score differed significantly, favoring the in-person group (t(153) = 2.70, p < 0.01), however, the effect size was small (Δ = 0.29). Few differences were observed across subgroup comparisons (e.g., infant age, maternal place of birth).

All observed differences between in-person and online PCITS administration were small and clinically insignificant, supporting the feasibility of online assessment. Recommendations are provided to optimize online PCITS assessment.