Factor Structure and Gender-Age Invariance of the Catalan Parent Version of the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire in a Large Community Sample

Parenting practices significantly influence children’s emotional, behavioral, and social development. The Alabama Parenting Questionnaire (APQ) assesses crucial parenting aspects linked to children’s disruptive behavior. The study aimed to provide further psychometric evidence from a multi-informant perspective of the Catalan parent-rated version of the APQ, including factor structure, gender-age invariance, internal consistency, and associations with mental health and social competence in a community sample of 937 children (6–12 years old). Confirmatory factor analyses provided partial support for the hypothesized 5-factor structure of the APQ, including Involvement (IN), Positive Parenting (PP), Poor Monitoring/Supervision (MS), Inconsistent Discipline (ID), and Corporal Punishment (CP). Absolute fit indices indicated an acceptable model fit; however, incremental fit indices fell below conventional cutoffs. Measurement invariance analyses supported partial invariance across child gender but did not support invariance across age groups. Internal consistency was marginal for IN, PP, and ID scores, and poor for MS and CP scores. Evidence of convergent and divergent validity was observed, with APQ dimensions showing associations with mental health and social competence in theoretically expected directions, particularly for ID and CP. Overall, these findings suggest that while the APQ is sensitive to variability in parenting practices associated with child adjustment, its psychometric properties differ across developmental stages in the age range studied. These results highlight the need for age-sensitive refinements and improvements in reliability before broader developmental generalization.