Content Validity of Parental Stressor Scale: Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PSS:PICU)

Abstract

Around 10% to 42% of parents suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder following child’s Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) admission. What is needed is an understanding of factors associated with parental stress at the beginning of the PICU admission to guide strategies to prevent the development of stress-related morbidity. Only one measure exists to assess sources of PICU-related parental stress, the Parental Stressor Scale: Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PSS:PICU). However, this scale has not been modified in over 30 years. The purpose of this study is to examine the content validity and descriptive statistics of the PSS:PICU, propose initial refinements of the scale based on interviews and quantitative analyses, and identify threats to validity in this measure using a convergent parallel mixed methods design. Three validity threats were identified: construct underrepresentation, construct-irrelevant variance, and item redundancy. Suggested scale refinements were to delete 17, revise 7, retain 15, and add 16 items for future testing.