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Assessing Children’s Responses to Interparental Conflict: Validation and Short Scale Development of SIS and CPIC-Properties Scales

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Abstract

The Children’s Perception of the Interparental Conflict Scale (CPIC) and The Security in the Interparental Subsystem (SIS) are two widely used scales capturing (a) children’s perception of the interparental conflict properties and (b) children’s reactions to the conflict. The aims of this study were to validate the part of CPIC measuring children’s perception of the conflict (CPIC-properties) and a modified SIS-version in a Scandinavian context and to develop concise short versions of the scales. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) were used to analyze the underlying factor structure of the full and short versions of the scales in a sample of N = 393 children and youth aged 10–15 years old (M age = 11.1, SD = 0.5; 52.2% girls). Regression analyses were used in creating the short scales and in investigating the predictive strengths of the short versions. The full and short versions of the CPICproperties and the modified SIS had excellent fit according to a two level model (CPICproperties) and a three-level model (modified SIS). The CPIC-properties was reduced from 25 items to 17 items and the modified SIS was reduced from 38 items to 17 items. The internal consistencies of both long and short versions were satisfactory. The predictive strengths of the short subscales were comparable to the full subscales’. The findings support the validity of the full and short versions of the CPIC-properties and the modified SIS. The advantages of the short versions are discussed; these scales should be validated in future studies.

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Notes

  1. Results available from lead author by request

  2. This is described further in the Method section

  3. The cohort includes 114.000 children, 95.000 mothers and 71.500 fathers

  4. In Norway, all parents breaking up must attend one session of mandatory mediation at the Family Counselling Service if they have at least one common child aged 15 years or younger. More than 20,000 mediations take place at the FCS annually

  5. This is notably higher than the national average (Holøien et al. 2016).

  6. Employments positions can be anything from 0% to 100%.

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Funding

This study was funded by the The Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth and Family Affairs and the Research Council of Norway (grant number: 250642)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Mental & Physical health, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, P.O. Box 777, Skøyen, 0213, Oslo, Norway

    Tonje Holt, Maren Sand Helland, Kristin Gustavson & Espen Røysamb

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1094, Blindern, 0317, Oslo, Norway

    Kristin Gustavson & Espen Røysamb

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame, 20 Browson Hall, Notre Dame, IN, 46556, USA

    Edward Mark Cummings & Anh Ha

Authors
  1. Tonje Holt
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  2. Maren Sand Helland
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  6. Espen Røysamb
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Correspondence to Tonje Holt.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethics and Consent Statement

The Regional Committees for Medical and Health Research Ethics “REC” in Norway approved the study (Protocol number: 2015/1374). Participation in the study was voluntary and both parents had to provide a written informed consent in order to let their children participate. The children were provided information about the study in a separate letter.

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Holt, T., Helland, M.S., Gustavson, K. et al. Assessing Children’s Responses to Interparental Conflict: Validation and Short Scale Development of SIS and CPIC-Properties Scales. J Abnorm Child Psychol 48, 177–196 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-019-00586-7

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