Perception Scale of Parenting Communication (COMPA): Development and Validation of a Parent-Child Communication Measure

The main goal of this study was the presentation of the psychometric characteristics of the Scale of Parenting Communication (COMPA): parental version, adolescent version (12-16 years old) and children version (7-11 years old). This instrument has the purpose of evaluating the percepction of parents and children regarding their communication. The sample was composed of 803 parents and 619 children sampled from a Portuguese population. The results of an exploratory factor analysis revealed a five factor structure for the parental version (emotional support/affective expression, alpha:.821; parental availability to communication, alpha:.732; metacommunication, alpha:.725; parental confidence/ sharing, alpha:.753; children confidence/sharing alpha:.615) and for the adolescent version (parental availability to communication, alpha:.865; children confidence/sharing, alpha:.873; emotional support/affective expression, alpha:.838; metacommunication, alpha:.805; negative communication patterns, alpha:.650) and a two factor structure for the children version (parental availability to communication, alpha:.842; emotional support/affective expression, alpha:.784). This factorial structure was confirmed by structural equations analysis. The levels of internal consistency of COMPA seem to be appropriate for research and clinical use.