the United States, alternative family configurations—
and an extension of the international use of the PCRI—
and representative norms are especially needed for
clinical and legal arenas.
Second, research that extends cross-informant con-
vergence is needed to describe the bidirectionality of
parent-child relationships and the unique parenting
roles of mothers and fathers. The contributing influ-
ence includes factors such as the following: (a) Who
fulfills the primary caretaking role? (b) What is the
frequency of time together? (e) Is there ease of com-
munication? (d) Is there mutual knowledge of each
other? (f) Do personal as well as cultural or societal
expectations influence parent-child relationships in
gender-based ways? What needs to be determined is
whether mothers’ and fathers’ self-reports of their
dyadic relationships with their children can have con-
vergent validity.Jacqueline K. CoffmanSee also Child Custody Evaluations; Children’s Testimony;
Divorce and Child Custody; Forensic Assessment;
Guardianship; Parenting Satisfaction Scale (PSS);
Uniform Child Custody Evaluation System (UCCES)Further Readings
Coffman, J. K., Guerin, D. W., & Gottfried, A. W. (2006).
Reliability and validity of the Parent-Child Relationship
Inventory (PCRI): Evidence from a longitudinal
cross-informant investigation. Psychological
Assessment, 18,209–214.
Gerard, A. B. (1994). Parent-Child Relationship Inventory
(PCRI): Manual. Los Angeles: Western Psychological
Services.
Gottfried, A. W., Bathurst, K., & Gottfried, A. E. (2003).
What judicial officers and attorneys should know about
psychological testing in child custody matters. Family
Law News: Official Publication of the State Bar of
California Family Law Section, 26,9–16.PARENTINGSATISFACTION SCALE(PSS)
Child rearing has always been one of life’s major
challenges and potential sources of self-fulfillment. In
today’s world, divorce and unwed parenthood often
alter parenting time and commitment for both parents,
and attractive occupational options or excessive jobrequirements may affect motivation, time, or energy
available for parenting. Connections between parental
attitudes and child-rearing behaviors have previously
been documented, but standardized instruments to
measure parenting satisfaction are not available. The
Parenting Satisfaction Scale (PSS) was constructed to
meet this need for reliable assessment of an important
family variable at a time of a major family change.
Scores derived from this 45-item scale enable mental
health and judicial personnel to define, compare, and
communicate levels of parent satisfaction in three
domains: satisfaction with spouse or other parent’s
child-rearing performance, satisfaction with the
responding parent’s relationship with the child, and
satisfaction with the responding parent’s own parent-
ing performance.Scale Development
Initially, scale items were generated from an open-
ended questionnaire administered to a heterogeneous
sample of approximately 100 adults ranging in age
from 21 to 54 years. A total of 259 items were gener-
ated from this procedure. Thirty-five members from
the original group then reviewed the items for clarity
and critical relevance to the parenting role, and a panel
of three experts from the field of child and family
development assessed the items’ face validity. A pool
of 211 items remained after these refining procedures.
A volunteer pilot sample of 78 mothers and 52 fathers
was then selected from local community groups. This sam-
ple ranged in age from 21 to 71 years, and 91% were
Caucasian. Educational levels ranged from less than high
school to postdoctoral study, and the ages of children in
their families ranged from 6 weeks to 38 years.
The PSS responses from the pilot sample were
analyzed using principal components factor analysis
and equimax rotation, yielding five factors with the 10
highest-loading items used to construct each scale.
These pilot phase factors were examined for criterion
validity, using four related scales: the Dyadic Adjust-
ment Scale developed by Spanier; two Marital and
Life Satisfaction Scales developed by Lee; and the
Life Satisfaction Index developed by Neugarten,
Havighurst, and Tobin. The PSS total score related
significantly to each of the criterion scales, with corre-
lations ranging from .46 to .56. The internal consis-
tency of this pilot version was examined with Cronbach’s
alpha, and reliabilities ranged from .76 to .93 for the
five individual scales and the total score.538 ———Parenting Satisfaction Scale (PSS)P-Cutler (Encyc)-45463.qxd 11/18/2007 12:43 PM Page 538