Adolescents ’ experience of parental psychological caregiving and neglect: Construct development.

We present an operationalization of psychological caregiving/neglect using adolescent self-reported survey items. A confirmatory latent variable modeling approach was used to measure and validate psychological caregiving/neglect in 2 adolescent (age 11 to 17) population cohorts involved with Child Protective Services (CPS) in the United States. The latent variable fits the samples well in both cohort populations indicating a valid construct, is mostly invariant across gender and age, is stable over time, and has good reliability. The measure also shows concurrent validity, associating strongly with all problem behavior domains. Questionnaire items similar to those used in this measure could be included along with other items in future studies of adolescent populations. We recommend further dialogue and development of this construct as a potential major contributing factor to the health and well-being of individuals and to advance research in the area of emotional care and neglect experiences in adolescence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)
Source: American Journal of Orthopsychiatry - Category: Psychiatry Authors: Source Type: research