Adaptation of the Coparenting Relationship Scale Questionnaire to Spanish Parents with Offspring

Abstract

The scientific literature supports that practicing positive coparenting leads to the healthy development of children. Consequently, professional interest in parenting and coparenting has experienced significant growth, and evaluating coparenting is crucial in family psychology for establishing action protocols in clinical practice. An instrument highly regarded within the scientific community for evaluating coparenting dynamics is The Coparenting Relationship Scale (CRS). This research aims to achieve two objectives: first, to adapt the CRS for the Spanish population of both engaged and separated/divorced parents and to ascertain its reliability, validity, and factorial invariance psychometric properties; second, to assess the effectiveness of the total coparenting measure in categorizing sample participants. A cross-sectional non-experimental investigation was conducted to address these objectives. The first objective was answered by conducting an instrumental study, and the second by an exploratory study using classification techniques and a causal-comparative study using multivariate inferential methods. It was concluded that the model comprising 20 items across two factors, Positive Coparenting and Negative Perception of Coparenting, is the simplest and best fit for the Spanish parent sample; it is invariant regarding gender and marital status, and the measures derived from each factor demonstrate reliability and convergent and discriminant validity. The resulting questionnaire for Spanish parents is named CRS-SEg-S&D. The Coparental Vitality measure calculated using the total weighted measure of CRS-SEg-S&D allows the sample of participants to be divided into three differentiated clusters called Coparental Robustness, Moderate Coparenting, and Coparenting Rickets.