The Quality of Parental Responsiveness: The Validity and Reliability of a New Observational Measure

Abstract

The quality of maternal care is one of the variables most related to child attachment and is, therefore, the target of many family interventions. The purpose of this study was to validate the Parental Responsiveness Quality (PRQ), a new observational measure that evaluates this variable. The analyses were performed on a sample of 50 participants. The internal structure was evaluated through an exploratory analysis (cluster analysis), which yielded five clusters. Four of them provided good reliability rates. Interjudge reliability was higher than .90 and the relationship with other variables, such as adult attachment style and parental stress, support the validity of their criteria. The PRQ measure promises to be a useful tool in the evaluation of the quality of parental responsiveness for parents with children between 1 and 6 years of age.