Parent-adolescent Communication: Validation of a German Language Scale and Its Longitudinal Association With Adolescent Mental Health

Overview

A German version of the Parent-Adolescent Communication Scale (PACS, Barnes \& Olson, 1982) will be validated in a large sample of children (10-18 years) and their parents. As a secondary objective, the association of communication quality, children's somatic symptoms and mental health will be explored. After two years, participants from the community sample will be contacted again to see whether baseline communication quality predicts adolescent mental health two years later.

The quality of parent-child communication (pcc) is likely to be of importance for child mental health, especially during adolescence. Therefore, pcc is relevant in etiologic research, diagnostics, and as a possible target for intervention in at-risk and clinical populations. Up to now, there is no validated questionnaire in German language to assess pcc as parent and child self-report. A German translation of the widely used Parent-Adolescent Communication Scale (PACS, Barnes \& Olson, 1982) will be validated in this study. This questionnaire comprises 20 items that are identical in parent and child versions apart from the referent (my mother/my father/my daughter/my son). In the original scale, two subscales were found via factor analysis: Open communication and problems in communication (ten items each). Internal consistency was adequate in most studies. Several studies have shown associations between pcc and child mental health. In the current study, the primary aim is to validate the questionnaire in a community, an at-risk, and a clinical sample, with the at-risk sample comprising parent-child dyads with parents seeking parenting advice. The clinical sample will be recruited among in- and outpatients at the Clinic for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry of the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf. Discriminative validity will be assessed in terms of group differences, construct validity in terms of correlations with different subscales on the parent-child relationship. With regard to the factorial structure, an exploratory factor analysis will be performed. As a secondary aim, the association between somatic symptoms, mental health, and pcc will be studied. In the longitudinal part of the study, parent-child communication quality will be analysed as a predictor of mental health, especially depressive symptoms and somatic symptoms.