Gridley Nicole, Mooney Kate, Blower Sarah, Melendez-Torres G J, Berry Vashti, Bywater Tracey
Carnegie School of Education, Leeds Beckett University, England, UK.
Department of Health Sciences, University of York, England, UK.
Child Care Health Dev. 2025 Jan;51(1):e70030. doi: 10.1111/cch.70030.
This study investigated the factor structure of the parenting sense of competence (PSoC), a measure of parenting self-efficacy, in a sample of parents recruited when their infants were under 2 months old. Due to the lack of longitudinal analysis of the PSoC's factor structure over time, the study sought to establish if the published two-factor structure was consistent over an 18-month period.
Data collected from 536 parents who had participated in a randomised controlled trial of universal proportionate parenting support, delivered in five sites in England, were subject to confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).
CFA revealed that a three-factor model was the best fit for the data. Longitudinal measurement invariance testing examined the stability of the three-factor model across an 18-month period. The results suggest that while the PSoC appeared to have configural variance, the metric and scalar variance were not supported. PSoC may be unstable across time and might be unreliable as a measure of parenting competence in parents of infants.
These findings are particularly salient for researchers and clinicians who are utilising the PSoC as a measure of change in routine practice or as part of evaluations of interventions. Further investigation of individual items is needed to refine the PSoC and improve its psychometric validity. Additional analyses are also needed to establish the invariance of the measure across different groups (age, sex, ethnicity and socioeconomic status).
本研究调查了育儿能力感（PSoC）的因子结构，PSoC是一种育儿自我效能感的测量指标，研究对象为婴儿2个月大时招募的父母样本。由于缺乏对PSoC因子结构随时间的纵向分析，该研究旨在确定已发表的两因子结构在18个月期间是否一致。
从536名参与了在英格兰五个地点开展的普遍适度育儿支持随机对照试验的父母那里收集的数据，进行了验证性因子分析（CFA）。
CFA显示三因子模型最适合这些数据。纵向测量不变性检验考察了三因子模型在18个月期间的稳定性。结果表明，虽然PSoC似乎具有构型方差，但度量和标量方差未得到支持。PSoC可能随时间不稳定，作为婴儿父母育儿能力的一种测量指标可能不可靠。
这些发现对于将PSoC用作常规实践变化的测量指标或作为干预评估一部分的研究人员和临床医生尤为重要。需要对各个项目进行进一步调查，以完善PSoC并提高其心理测量效度。还需要进行额外分析，以确定该测量指标在不同群体（年龄、性别、种族和社会经济地位）中的不变性。
