A Systematic Review of Parent–Child Communication Measures: Instruments and Their Psychometric Properties

Abstract

Parent–child communication represents an important variable in clinical child and family psychology due to its association with a variety of psychosocial outcomes. To give an overview of instruments designed to measure the quality of parent–child communication from the child’s (8–21 years) perspective and to assess the psychometric quality of these instruments, we performed a systematic literature search in Medline and PsycInfo (last: February 25, 2022). Peer-reviewed journal articles published in English with a child-rated instrument measuring the quality of parent–child communication were included. Initial screening for eligibility and inclusion, subsequent data extraction, and quality assessment were conducted by couples of review team members. Based on the screening of 5115 articles, 106 studies reported in 126 papers were included. We identified 12 parent–child communication instruments across the studies. The Parent-Adolescent Communication Scale (PACS) was used in 75% of the studies. On average, the evidence for psychometric quality of the instruments was low. Few instruments were used in clinical and at-risk samples. Several instruments are available to rate parent–child communication from the child’s perspective. However, their psychometric evidence is limited and the theoretical foundation is largely undocumented. This review has limitations with regard to selection criteria and language bias.Registration PROSPERO: CRD42021255264.

Psychometric Evaluation of the German version of the Parent-Adolescent Communication Scale

“…The test-retest reliability after twelve weeks was solely medium across all scales, with the lowest value in the problem subscale. These ndings on the test-retest reliability are consistent with previous research on the PACS (Sales et al, 2007;Zapf et al, 2023). Indeed, the perceived quality of PCC can change over weeks.…”

“…In this context, Parent-Child Communication (PCC) could play an important role in the vulnerable developmental period of adolescence (Ackard et al, 2006;Smetana, 2011). Even though there have been international studies using various instruments to assess PCC in adolescence, there is still no German-language questionnaire that can be used to validly assess the quality of dyadic parent-adolescent communication (Zapf et al, 2023).PCC can be de ned as "the verbal and nonverbal interaction between a parent and child within a family system" (Munz, 2015). Although the above-mentioned de nition conceptualizes PCC technically, underlying constructs like communication and corresponding theories should be considered (Zapf et al, 2023).…”

“…A recent systematic review investigated the psychometric properties of PCC measures and found the Parent-Adolescent Communication Scale (PACS; Barnes & Olson, 1982) to be the most common PCC instrument that has a theoretical foundation, and its psychometric properties have been evaluated in multiple studies (Zapf et al, 2023). Moreover, the PACS differentiated between clinical and non-clinical populations in previous studies (Zapf et al, 2023). Although the PACS has been translated and evaluated from English to nine other languages, there is no validated German-language questionnaire instrument to assess dyadic PCC.…”

Impact of sociodemographic factors, stress, and communication on health‐related quality of life in survivors of pediatric cancer

“…After finishing the surveys at enrollment (T1), families were contacted for follow-up assessments at 1 (T2), 3 (T3), and 5 years (T4) later. 23…”

“…At 5-year follow-up, 18% (n = 59) of children from enrollment were deceased. 23 Of 277 approached families, 45% (n = 124) participated. For the current manuscript, the final sample included only mothers (N = 80) and children (N = 50), who completed mother proxyreported HRQOL and adolescent self-reported HRQOL at 5-year follow-up.…”