Stress in families of children with disabilities: An examination of the parenting stress index-short form (PSI-SF) in three Arab Countries

Parents of children with disabilities (CWD) may experience varying degrees of stress due to the multiplicity of factors affecting both the lives of the children and the increased challenges to parental roles. There has been limited research on the stress experienced by parents of children with disabilities in Arab countries; however, this is in part because of the paucity of reliable and valid instruments to measure stress in this population. We examined the psychometric properties of a widely used instrument, the Parenting Stress Index-Short Form (PSI-SF), on a sample of parents of children with disabilities in three Arab countries: Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. Using data from 867 participants, a confirmatory factor analysis found that the data fit a three-factor model. The model showed high reliability for the PSI-SF as well as positive correlations of moderate to high magnitude between the latent factors in each country. The results support configural, metric, scalar, and strict invariance across the three countries. Implications for the use of the PSISF by clinicians, psychologists, and educational professionals in Arab countries are discussed.