Parenting Alliance Measure: Factor Structure in an Argentinian Sample

Abstract

Parenting alliance refers to those aspects of a relationship between parents that are related to their shared parental responsibilities and are independent from their romantic bond. It reflects the way each member of the parental dyad appraises the other’s strengths and weaknesses as a parent and their joint parenting work. The Parenting Alliance Measure (PAM) was developed to measure this construct reliably, but with limited representation of minorities in its original sample. The aim of this study was to explore the factor structure and psychometric properties of a Spanish version of the complete PAM in an Argentinian sample. Two hundred twenty-seven parents from Buenos Aires completed the PAM. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was completed based on the Unweighted Least Squares estimation method with oblique promax rotation on a polychoric correlation matrix and parallel analysis as the extraction method. Statistical analysis yielded a two-factor solution retaining 18 of the PAM’s initial 20 items that explained 65% of the variance. Each factor was composed of 9 items. Factor 1 was related to respect towards the other parent and Factor 2 to the quality of their communication and teamwork. These results support the use of the PAM with Argentinian samples.