Psychosocial Strengths Inventory for Children and Adolescents–Short Form: Measurement invariance across age and gender

Objective Psychosocial competencies encompass adaptive affect, behavior, and attention regulation across social-behavioral demands. Despite said competencies in childhood uniquely predicting developmental trajectories, there are few pragmatic, validated measures assessing these competencies. One exception is the Psychosocial Strengths Inventory for Children and Adolescents–Short Form (PSICA–SF), a free caregiver-report measure supported by past psychometric research. However, this study is the first to assess its measurement invariance across caregiver genders, child genders, and age-bands. Method An online-recruited sample of 865 caregivers (women 62.5%, men 37.5%) of youth aged 2–10 years (boys 54.7%, girls 45.3%) completed the PSICA–SF. Ratings were compared for boys and girls, maternal and paternal ratings, and early and middle childhood. Multigroup confirmatory factor analyses examined configural invariance across the PSICA–SF’s 3-factors (i.e., prosociality, compliance, attention regulation) tested by subsample via fit indices (i.e., CFI, TLI, RMSEA, SRMR) and metric and scalar invariance via changes in indices across nested models. Results Results supported the PSICA–SF’s configural, metric, and scalar invariance across variables of interest. Further, scalar invariance of models allowed for meaningful examination of latent mean differences across-groups. Specifically, per PSICA–SF scores, girls and youth in middle childhood typically had higher overall and domain-specific competencies (ds = 0.23–0.30 and 0.14–0.41), and maternal caregivers generally reported greater prosociality (d = 0.28). Conclusions Results further validate the PSICA–SF as a brief, multi-informant measure of youth psychosocial competencies across tested caregiver and child genders and age-bands—helping bridge a key instrument gap in pediatric research and clinical practice.