P-CRS: A Clinical Scale to Assess the Parent-Child Relationship in Infancy and Early Childhood

Abstract

This study aimed to examine the ability of a new clinician-report tool, the Parent-Child Relationship Scale (P-CRS), to assess the individual contributions that parents and their children make within the parent-child relationship, as well as interactions between parents and children in terms of developmental psychopathology. As clinical diagnoses in early childhood is both important and difficult, it is necessary to identify tools that can effectively contribute to evaluating parent-child relationships during the diagnostic process. A sample of 268 mother-child dyads, taken from both public and private clinical settings, was assessed. Clinicians were asked to assess these dyads using the P-CRS after four to five sessions of clinical evaluation. The results indicated that the three areas assessed by the P-CRS—“Interaction”, “Child” and “Parent”—could have different impacts on the various aspects of the parent-child relationship within distinct diagnostic groups. Thus, our findings support the use of the P-CRS to assist with clinical diagnosis during early childhood.