Description
Designed to evaluate the magnitude of stress in the parent–child system, the fourth edition of the popular PSI is a 120-item inventory that focuses on three major domains of stress: child characteristics, parent characteristics, and situational/demographic life stress. For ages 1 month to 12 years.
A 36-item screening form is also available! Learn more about the PSI-4 Short Form.
Features and benefits
- Commonly used as a diagnostic or screening measure to evaluate the parenting system.
- Helps identify at-risk or problem areas in the child’s or parent’s behaviour.
- Two domain scores and 13 subscales facilitate both treatment planning in relation to problem areas and the evaluation of the effectiveness of interventions.
- Useful in family system evaluations such as custody evaluations or at-risk for dysfunctional parenting.
- Major enhancements in this revision include: improved cultural sensitivity of item language, increased internal consistency of scales, the addition of age-based norms at the domain and subscale level, enhanced factor loading of items on scales, the addition of T scores to enhance interpretation, and a new normative sample that includes fathers.
- Has been translated into more than 30 languages and maintains its factor structure and predictive abilities.
- Expanded norms are organized by each year of a child’s age. T scores are provided, but percentiles remain the primary interpretive framework.
- A Defensive Responding subscale indicates whether the parent is presenting a “minimizing” or “look good” bias to their responses.
- Validation studies conducted within a variety of foreign populations, including Chinese, Portuguese, French Canadian, Finnish, and Dutch, suggest that the PSI is a robust measure that maintains its validity with diverse non-English-speaking culture.
Test structure
Two domains, Child and Parent, combine to form the Total Stress scale. The Life Stress scale provides information about the amount of parent stress caused by factors outside the parent-child relationship.
- Within the Child Domain, six subscales (Distractibility/Hyperactivity, Adaptability, Reinforces Parent, Demandingness, Mood, and Acceptability) evaluate sources of stress as gathered from the parent’s report of child characteristics.
- Within the Parent Domain, seven subscales (Competence, Isolation, Attachment, Health, Role Restriction, Depression, and Spouse/Parenting Partner Relationship) measure sources of stress related to parent characteristics.
