Development and Validation of the Parental Worry Scale in Chinese Parents

Abstract: Parental worry significantly impacts both parents’ well-being and children’s health outcomes, yet no valid tool exists to assess parents’ worries specifically related to child-rearing. This research aims to develop and validate the Parental Worry Scale (PWS) for parents of school-aged children. In Study 1, an item pool was generated through existing scales and semi-structured interviews with 15 parents. Study 2 involved exploratory factor analysis (Sample 1, N = 260), establishing an eight-dimensional scale (physical and mental health, personality traits, behavioral habits, intergenerational parenting, negative emotion transmission, learning difficulties, future prospects, and parenting approaches) with 32 items. Further analysis (Sample 2, N = 250) confirmed the measure’s structural validity, discriminant and convergent validity, and concurrent validity. The internal consistency and split-half reliability of the scale and its sub-scale were also found to be good. Measurement invariance was confirmed across parents of primary/middle school children and parental gender. The test–retest reliability (Sample 3, N = 360) was demonstrated to be acceptable. Overall, the measure shows good reliability and validity, making it suitable for measuring parental worry among parents of school-age children and providing an effective tool for further research.