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Original Article

Measurement Invariance Analysis of the Parental Stress Index

Published Online:March 28, 2018https://doi.org/10.1027/1015-5759/a000463

Abstract

Abstract. While parenting research continues to compare similarities and differences in mothers’ and fathers’ behaviors based on mean values on the respective dimensions, measurement invariance as a prerequisite for these comparisons has seldom been assured. The present study thus subjected the well-known Parenting Stress Index (PSI), widely used in models of family functioning, to a rigorous measurement invariance analysis based on (N = 214) Austrian couples with children younger than 3 years of age. We evaluated configural, metric, scalar, and uniqueness invariance on item and subscale levels, and tested for structural invariance of means and variances of the PSI parent and child domain by second-order confirmatory factor analyses. As a result, only measurement differences on the scalar levels affected the factor scores, though negligibly. On the structural levels, no differences were found on the PSI child domain across parents, but on the PSI parent domain, mothers reported more stress.

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