Psychometric analysis of the Emotional Availability Scales for video-recorded interactions between parents and their preschool-aged children

Jörg Michael Müller ^* Christina Elvert

• University Hospital Münster, Münster, Germany

In the context of parent-child interaction, the Emotional Availability Scales have been developed to capture a dyad's emotional connection in an observational setting by four parental and two child-related scales. This study aims to test the psychometric foundation of the EAS, including basic descriptive preconditions on the item level and structural validity on the scale level, for a preschool-aged sample; as such, it complements analyses by Aran for a sample of infants. The sample of parents and their preschool-aged children is a mixed clinically referred and non-clinical sample from a midsize city in Germany. Interactions were observed in a free-play setting and rated with the EAS by two blind and certificated raters.models. An additional post hoc exploratory factor analysis with parallel analysis suggests a non-interpretable two-factor structure. Psychometric analyses did not validate the EAS's postulated structure and measurement model. A post hoc literature review showed that ceiling effects on the item and scale levels are not unique to our study. However, traditionally important concepts or terms of parent-child relationships covered by the EAS are not rejected by our study and can be assessed with alternative measures, but these also need psychometric evaluation in the future.