Psychometric properties of the Sinhala Parental Stress Scale and BriefCOPE: Validation among parents of children with chronic illnesses and developmental disabilities

Abstract

Measuring stress associated with bringing up a child with a chronic illness or a developmental disability can help health care professionals prevent more serious consequences in terms of psychological health as well as in planning effective intervention strategies for families. Identifying coping styles employed by parents in coping with stress can be useful in identifying the strengths and weaknesses of a particular family and help formulate interventions and services accordingly to strengthen family resilience. Therefore it is necessary to obtain valid and reliable tools to assess parental stress and coping. In busy clinical settings as well as research settings where there are multiple demands on participants, it is important to use brief measurement tools. The Parental Stress Scale (Berry & Jones, 1995) and BriefCOPE (Carver, 1997) are brief yet psychometrically sound instruments for assessing parental stress and coping respectively.