Parenting Alliance: a Multifactor Perspective

The Parenting Alliance Measure (PAM) provides an operational representation of Weissman and Cohen's theory of parenting that has both clinical and research applications. The PAM is a 20-item, self-report instrument that measures the strength of the perceived alliance between parents of children ages 1 to 19 years. Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis was used to examine whether the PAM measures the same constructs for mothers and fathers. In addition, a formal comparison between a one- and two-factor solution was conducted, and the invariance of parameter estimates for the preferred model was tested for mothers and fathers. Results indicated that the PAM measures the same dimensions for these two groups. A formal comparison between the one- and two-factor solutions favored the less parsimonious two-factor model. At the same time, the relationship between these constructs was sufficiently high to warrant interpretation of an overall parenting alliance score. Accordingly, results from the current investigation support two levels of interpretation on the PAM. Normative raw score conversions to percentile and standardized T scores are provided.