Evaluation of a Measure of Parent Behavior: An Item Response Theory Approach to Dimensionality and Informant Agreement

Abstract

The Children's Report of Parental Behavior Inventory is a widely used three-dimensional psychometric measure to assess parenting behaviors as reported by children and parents. Parent-child dyads tend to report discrepant information about parenting, which has been of great interest to clinical and developmental psychologists, as well as psychometricians. Researchers agree that construct disagreement within families can be meaningful, though measurement error and interpretative limitations can obscure this information. Using item response theory (IRT), this paper produced a shortened two-dimensional version of the CPRBI for a study of parent-child disagreement, which then was analyzed for dimensionality and discrepant item functioning between children and parents in a sample of sixth graders and their mothers. Methods include exploratory factor analysis, principal components analysis, unidimensional and multidimensional item response modeling, and differential item functioning. The results propose that CRPBI is not group invariant across mothers and children and that the dimensionality of the CRPBI might vary across different populations.