Validation of the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire in Finnish mothers and fathers of toddlers

Parental reflective functioning (PRF) is important in guiding parenting behavior. It is traditionally measured with interviews that are relatively time-consuming. A self-report measure of PRF, the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (PRFQ), has been developed but has not yet been extensively validated across different sociocultural contexts. The aim of this study was to examine the factorial structure of the PRFQ in a community-based first-time parent sample in Finland. We further examined the associations between PRFQ scales and parental demographic features, depression, emotional availability (EA) in parent-child relationships, and representations of the child. The sample comprised 355 mothers and 108 fathers and was part of a larger longitudinal study. Data were collected by an online questionnaire at the child age of 2 years. PRF was measured with PRFQ, parental depression with Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression, parent-child interaction quality with Emotional Availability Self-Report, and parental representations of the child with a modified adjective list developed in conjunction with the Interview of Maternal/Paternal Representations. Our results showed that the factor structure of PRFQ was similar to the original sample, and parental demographics, depression, and parenting variables were associated with the PRF scales in an expected manner, supporting the validity of PRFQ across different cultures.