Presentation of the French adaptation of the Parenting Alliance Inventory: Issues in defining and measuring coparenting

Abstract

The Parenting Alliance Inventory (PAI) is a 20-item questionnaire designed to assess parental alliance as defined by Weissman and Cohen’s theory of parenting alliance. This article aims to describe the first steps in factor structure and construct validation of the French version. A total of 202 French cohabiting parents completed this questionnaire, with the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (a measure of marital satisfaction) and the Parental Stress Index. The results of French families differed from those of American families on the number of factors: first, four factors rather than the original two-factor solution more meaningfully described the French data; and second, only 17 items distributed into these four subscales. Then, these subscales correlated with measures of dyadic adjustment and Parental Stress Index. These findings support the construct validity of the French version of questionnaire, but lead to a discussion of issues in defining and measuring coparenting.

Keywords:

• coparenting
• marital relationships
• Parenting Alliance Inventory
• parental stress