The PBI-BC: a brief current form of the Parental Bonding Instrument for adolescent research.

The present report describes the development of a brief form of the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI-BC) intended to measure perceptions of current parental characteristics. The PBI-BC, consisting of eight items and inquiring into parental characteristics as perceived by the adolescent respondent over the previous 3 months, is shown to closely replicate the factor structure reported for the PBI. The scales are shown to have reasonable internal reliability. Arithmetic difference scores representing the two bipolar factors seem to be adequate for studies requiring easily calculated measures of parental care versus rejection, and parental control versus autonomy. The PBI-BC may be particularly useful in multivariate studies of adolescent samples, where the two dimensions of parental care versus rejection and parental control versus autonomy are thought to be potentially relevant.