Inventory of Parent Experiences

Abstract

The Inventory of Parent Experiences is a 38-item measure that explores a parent's social support network and assesses satisfaction with parenting. The Inventory has two parts: Social Support and Parenting Satisfaction.

• The Social Support items characterize the parent's support network, including: size of the network, types of network members, closeness of the parent's relationships, quality and stability of the spousal/partner relationship, helpfulness of network members, effect of the parent's job on family life, and frequency of the parent's own social opportunities.
• The Parenting Satisfaction items assess satisfaction with the parent's social life, support network, and "life situation," including: the parent's amount of social contact, amount of household responsibility, parenting chores, personal relationships, availability of parenting support, the effect of employment on other parts of the parent's life, and the parent's life in general.

The Parenting Satisfaction portion has four subscales: Community Satisfaction, Friendship Satisfaction, Family Satisfaction, and Parental Role Satisfaction. Each subscale score is calculated as the mean of responses. The Social Support portion of the Inventory was not scored.

T-tests of means for three of the subscales on the Parenting Satisfaction portion show a significant difference between the normative and high-risk control groups. However, each subscale includes only a small number of items and most of the scales have modest reliability.

Dataset Names

Raw Dataset Name: PyH
Scored Dataset Name: IPEySPc

Keywords

Social Support Network, Family Relations, Parenting Skills, Parental Satisfaction, Community Involvement, Work Situation.