Day, A., Feltner, A., Somers, C., Vanderwill, L., Stevens, K., Willis, T., Henneman, K., Cohick, S., Patterson, D., & Resko, S. (2022). Development and validation of a self-assessment tool to assess resource parents’ personal attributes, knowledge, attitudes & behaviors around caring for teens (RPSAC-T): An exploratory study. Journal of Public Child Welfare, 16(4), 512–532. https://doi.org/10.1080/15548732.2021.1918603
Number of participants: Initial validation sample n=170; Cross-validation sample n=329
Population:
- Race/Ethnicity — Initial validation sample: 91% Caucasian, 6% African Amer., 4% Amer. Indian/Alaskan Native, 2% Hispanic, and 1% Asian Amer.; Cross-validation sample: 88 % Caucasian, 10% African Amer., 2% Amer. Indian/Alaskan Native, 2% Hispanic, and 1% Asian Amer.
Summary:
The study develops and evaluates the psychometric properties of a tool to assess resource parents’ (the collective term used to refer to kinship/foster/adoptive parents) knowledge, perceptions, attitudes, and skills to care for teens placed in their homes. After first engaging 34 resource parents informally for feedback on initial item creation and selection, the internal consistency and reliability of the Resource Parent Self-Assessment on Caregiving for Teens (RPSAC-T) was examined across two samples of resource parents, including an initial validation sample and cross-validation sample. Cronbach’s alphas ranged from 0.730 to 0.930 for the initial validation sample, and 0.432 to 0.867 for the cross-validation sample. This three-stage process revealed 17 characteristics and 10 competencies retained for a total of 27 constructs measured by 161 items.