Parental Attitudes, Beliefs, and Responses to Childhood Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: The Parental Attitudes and Behaviors Scale

ABSTRACT

This paper documents preliminary examination of the factor structure and psychometric properties of the Parental Attitudes and Behaviors Scale (PABS), an OCD-specific measure of parental attitudes, beliefs, and behavioral strategies related to childhood OCD. Employing a sample of 123 youth (mean age = 11.7; 59% male, 79% Caucasian) diagnosed with OCD in an outpatient child anxiety clinic, we used exploratory factor analysis to produce a 3-factor solution representing the following domains of parental responses to childhood OCD: accommodation, empowerment, and hostility/blame. These scales demonstrated adequate internal consistency and concurrent validity, providing preliminary evidence for the psychometric integrity of the PABS.

KEYWORDS:

• Childhood obsessive compulsive disorder
• family response
• family environment
• measurement
• parental responses

The authors wish to acknowledge the following sources of support: R01 MH58459 (John Piacentini, PhD) and 1 T32 MH073517:01A1 (Tara Peris, PhD).

Notes

Note. CY-BOCS = Children's Yale Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale; BSI = Brief Symptom Inventory; PRFA = Parent Report of Family Accommodation Scale; PABS = Parental Attitudes and Behaviors Scale.

Note. N = 123.

∗∗p < .01.