Validation of the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire among maltreating and nonmaltreating mothers.

The Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (PRFQ; Luyten et al., 2017) is a central measure of parental reflective functioning (i.e., the tendency to consider children's mental experiences); still, little is known about the psychometric properties of the PRFQ among maltreating and nonmaltreating mothers. Maltreating mothers may have difficulties with parental reflective functioning given their risk for biased child-related cognitions and difficulties with sensitive emotion socialization. The present study investigated measurement invariance and the concurrent validity of the PRFQ in a sample of racially diverse, low-income maltreating ( n = 165) and nonmaltreating ( n = 83) mothers of preschoolers. Mothers were enrolled in a randomized controlled trial of a brief intervention (Valentino et al., 2019). A three-factor model emerged, representing the subscales (prementalization, certainty about mental states, and interest and curiosity) identified in a previous validation study of the PRFQ (Luyten et al., 2017); however, three items were excluded due to low factor loadings. Scalar group-based (maltreating vs. nonmaltreating) and longitudinal measurement invariance was found. Maternal prementalization and interest and curiosity were associated with emotion socialization behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).