Development and Validation of the Protective Factors Survey: A Self-Report Measure of Protective Factors Against Child Maltreatment

• NCJ Number: 232726
• Journal: Child Abuse & Neglect Volume: 34 Issue: 10 Dated: October 2010 Pages: 762-772
• Author(s): Jacqueline M. Counts; Elenor S. Buffington; Karin Chang-Rios; Heather N. Rasmussen; Kristopher J. Preacher
• Date Published: October 2010
• Length: 11 pages
• Grant Number(s): 90CA1729
• Sponsoring Agency: US Dept of Health and Human Services
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Test/Measurement
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study evaluated the internal structure of a self-report measure of multiple family-level protective factors against abuse and neglect and examined the relationship of this instrument to other measures of child maltreatment.

Abstract

The study concludes that the Protective Factors Survey (PFS) is a valid and reliable instrument for measuring individual differences in multiple protective factors in families. It is easily administered and offers programs an alternative to costly, time-intensive measures. The subscales - Family Functioning, Emotional Support, Concrete Supports, and Nurturing and Attachment - can be used by practitioners to understand the service population more completely, inform services, and contribute to the evidence base of a protective factors approach. Practitioners can build on the strengths or protective factors in parents and select services to address areas that are less developed. Four measures were administered to assess constructs that were predicted to correlate negatively with the protective factors: child abuse potential, depression, stress, and maladaptive coping. The PFS was also predicted to correlate positively with adaptive coping, such as use of emotional and instrumental social support and positive reframing. The PFS subscales were significantly related to these measures in the directions predicted. For the exploratory factor analysis, 11 agencies from 4 States administered the PFS, the Brief Child Abuse Potential Inventory, and another measure in order to establish content validity. This involved 249 participants. Exploratory factor analyses were conducted in order to obtain a small, integrated set of items that tap the targeted protective factors correlated with other theoretically important constructs. Correlations were computed to explore PFS criterion-related validity. Confirmatory factor analyses were conducted on an additional sample of 689 participants from 19 agencies across the United States. 6 tables and 57 references