Factor structure and psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire (APQ) for children

Background: The Alabama Child Parenting Questionnaire (APQ) is a multi-source and multi-method instrument created to assess the most relevant parenting practices from a bidirectional perspective. Despite its advantages, the APQ has not been validated with a Spanish population. The objective of this study was to analyse the psychometric properties and factor structure of the APQ, child self-report version, in a community sample of Spanish children. Method: The participants were 423 Spanish children (58.9% boys) aged between 8 and 12 years. Results: Exploratory factor analysis suggested a version of the questionnaire that consists of 16 items with a four-factor structure: Parental Involvement, Positive Parenting, Inconsistent Discipline, and Poor Supervision. The internal consistency of the subscales was moderate, except for the father's Parental Involvement factor, which reached acceptable reliability. Convergent validity with a measure of quality of life was adequate. Gender differences were only found in Poor Supervision, with higher scores in boys than in girls. Conclusions: Overall, these findings provide support for the use of the APQ to measure parenting practices perceived by Spanish children.