Clinical Assessment of Child and Adolescent Personality and ...

CHAPTER 12 assessing family context291The 36-item short form of the scalehas been tested and items form two relativelydistinct factors of parental distressand dysfunctional parent child interactions(Haskett et al., 2006). Importantly, thecorrelation between the total scores on theshort and long form is generally quite high(e.g., r = 87; Abidin, 1995).NormsThe normative sample for the PSI consistedof 534 parents of children referredto a small group of pediatric clinics in Virginia;the median age of the children was9 months (SD = 23.2 months). The representativenessof the normative sample isone of the major weaknesses of the scale.The sample consisted of primarily White(92%), highly educated (1/3 with collegedegrees) parents from central Virginia.Thus, the use of norm-referenced scoresfor families that do not match these characteristicsis questionable.Reliability and ValidityThe manual of the PSI provides convincingevidence for the internal consistencyand temporal stability of the threecomposite scores: Total Stress, ParentDomain, and Child Domain. The reliabilitycoefficients for the individual scales,however, are much more variable andtypically exhibit relatively low reliabilityestimates. The manual provides one ofthe best summaries of the extensive use ofthe PSI in research on the family contextof preschoolers (see also Abidin, Flens, &Austin, 2006 for an updated review). Ingeneral, the PSI scales have been correlatedwith other measures of family functioning(Pinderhughes, Dodge, Bates,Petit, & Zelli, 2000), including correlationswith observations of parentingbehavior (Bigras, LaFreniere, & Dumas,1996). Also, the PSI has differentiatedfamilies who are experiencing major stressorsfrom nonstressed families (Holden& Banez, 1996; Whiteside-Mansell et al.,2007) and has proven sensitive to treatmenteffects (Nixon, Sweeney, Erickson,& Touyz, 2003).Also, factor analyses generally supportthe broad Parent and Child Domainsfor grouping the various PSI subscales,although some studies have provided supportfor a third Parent–Child InteractionDomain, which includes the subscalesof Child Acceptability, Child ReinforcesParent, and Parent Attachment to Child(Hutcheson & Black, 1996; Solis & Abidin,1991). Further, Bigras et al. (1996)reported that, in a sample of 218 mothersof preschoolers, the Parent and ChildDomains predicted parental, familial,and child outcomes different from thoseobtained from other sources. Specifically,the Parent Domain was more stronglyand independently associated with measuresof marital adjustment and maternaldepression, whereas the Child Domainwas more strongly and independentlyassociated with child difficulties reportedby the mother and children’s problemsobserved during parent–child interactions.These results are important in suggestingthat the two domains are valid inassessing somewhat independent dimensionsof family functioning.Marital ConflictThere is a long history of research showinga link between divorce and childbehavior problems. The most comprehensivesummary of this research comes fromAmato and Keith (1991). These authorsconducted a meta-analysis of 92 publishedstudies of the impact of divorce on a child’spsychological well-being. The combinedsamples from the 92 studies involvedover 13,000 children. This meta-analysisrevealed that divorce consistently had a