The Psychosocial Strengths Inventory for Children and Adolescents: A Preliminary Evaluation

Abstract

The Psychosocial Strengths Inventory for Children and Adolescents (PSICA) was created to address the need for a valid and practical measure of children’s psychosocial strengths that is feasible for use in psychological assessment and treatment. We evaluated the PSICA’s reliability and validity in a sample of 49 families. Parents completed measures of child psychosocial competence and behavior problems. The PSICA demonstrated good internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and negative associations with child behavior problems. The PSICA is a promising measure for the assessment of child competence and outcomes of parenting interventions.

Keywords:

• Behavior problems
• child assessment
• child strengths
• measurement
• psychosocial competence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Foundation under Grant 002835.SAP and the Central Michigan University Graduate Research and Creative Endeavors Grant.