Italian adaptation of the Parental Attitudes Scales

Introduction: the present study explored the psychometric properties of the Italian version of the Parental Attitude Scales (PAD). The PAD are a 46-item self-report questionnaire that was developed to assess three parental attitudes dimensions: Pleasure-Displeasure, Arousal-Non Arousal, Dominance-Submissiveness. Methods: 495 parents (241 males; mean age= 40.6 ± 5.7 years) completed the PAD and measures of theoretically and conceptually related constructs. A sub-sample of 68 participants completed the PAD twice in order to explore the test-retest reliability. Results: The results from Principal Component Analyses (PCA) did not support the original three-factor solution. The results indicated that 17 items should be removed. Results from the PCA conducted on the reduced version (29-item) of the PAD supported a four-factor solution, which explained 30.63% of the total variance. Internal consistency for the reduced scale was acceptable, temporal stability was questionable, and concurrent and discriminant validity was adequate. Conclusions: The reduced 29-item version of the PAD seemed a more psychometrically sound measure than the original 46-item version. However, further studies are needed to achieve a comprehensive knowledge of the psychometric properties of the 29-item PAD in Italian contexts.