The Parent-Child Relationship Inventory for the assessment of German parents

The seven content scales of the Parent-Child Relationsship Inventory (PCRI) are supposed to measure aspects of the relationship between parents and their children from the perspective of parents who seek custody. The applicability of the PCRI was examined in the context of child custody evaluations in Germany. In a study with .334 mothers and fathers, the means of the seven scales were significantly different to those, of the American standardization sample. The internal consistency of some scales were below the coefficients published in the American manual. Factor analyses resulted in a four-factor solution for fathers and mothers. Based on the factor analytic results, four new scales were constructed. The pattern-of correlations with two scales for educational behavior indicated the convergent and discriminant validity of those factor scales. But when,subjects completed the PCRI while imagining that they were evaluated by an expert because they wanted the custody of the child,after separation or divorce, the scale means were significantly different and represented an "ideal" parent-child relationship. Under this condition, concurrent correlations with educational behavior were also weaker. The applicability of the German version of the PCRI was discussed on the basis of these results.