The stability of parental bonding reports: a 20-year follow-up.
Open accessAbstract
Background Addressing the long-term reliability of retrospectively assessed parenting is underscored by the well-documented association between parenting behaviors, and mood disorders in offspring. The rarity of longitudinal research with follow-up periods exceeding 10 years creates a need for additional studies.Methods 134 offspring of depressed and non-depressed parents were assessed on Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI) scores, lifetime major depression (MDD), and current depressive symptoms at four waves across 20 years. PBI rank order and mean level stability, individual trajectories, and the impact of baseline age, gender, and lifetime MDD on stability, were obtained using multiple regression and linear mixed model analyses.Results Besides paternal overprotection which showed a 1.6-point average decrease, the PBI domains remained non-significant for mean level change over 20 years. However, there was a significant individual variation for all PBI domains. Lifetime MDD and age did not significantly impact retest correlations; older age at baseline was associated with higher average paternal overprotection. Sons had lower retest correlations than daughters, but did not differ from daughters on mean level stability. Current depressive symptoms were associated with PBI scores, but did not impact the effect of lifetime MDD, gender or age on mean level stability and individual trajectories.Limitations Small sample sizes and measuring lifetime MDD as present or absent may have restricted our ability to detect effects of MDD history on PBI stability.Conclusion The PBI is a robust measure of an important environmental risk for depressive disorders, and can be variably sensitive to sample characteristics, the passage of time and mood fluctuations. However, this sensitivity does not appear to significantly bias the long-term stability of this instrument.
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The PBI has good retest reliability, internal consistency, and validity, with demonstrated stability over twenty years.
“The psychometric properties of the instrument have been extensively evaluated and it has been shown to have good retest reliability, internal consistency, and validity (Parker, 1989, 1990), with demonstrated stability over twenty years (Murphy et al., 2010).”
From Another step closer to measuring the ghosts in the nursery: preliminary validation of the Trauma Reflective Functioning Scale. (2014) · cites this paper as Murphy et al., 2010
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- Authors
- Murphy, E., Wickramaratne, P., & Weissman, M.
- Affiliations
- New York State Psychiatric Institute (US)
- Corresponding author
- Murphy, Eleanor
- Venue
- Journal of Affective Disorders
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2010-09
- Volume
- 125
- Issue
- 1-3
- Pages
- 307-315
- ISSN
- 0165-0327 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC2889015
- OpenAlex
- W2091158485
- Cited by
- 100
- References
- 46
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 6 · 2014: 10 · 2013: 5 · 2012: 4
- FWCI
- 4.56
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Journal of Affective Disorders (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Columbia Academic Commons (Columbia University)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health
- National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH036197, R01MH060912-S06, 5-T32 MH13043-34, R01MH060912, T32MH013043)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Maternal Mental Health During Pregnancy and Postpartum
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Psychometric Methodologies and Testing
- Keywords
- parental bonding, Parental Bonding Instrument, test-retest reliability, long-term stability, paternal overprotection, offspring depression, gender differences, age effects, mood disorders
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Major Depressive Disorder, Father-Child Relations, Female, Humans, Individuality, Longitudinal Studies, Male, Mother-Child Relations, Object Attachment, Parent-Child Relations, Personality Inventory, Psychometrics, Retrospective Studies, Sex Factors, Child of Impaired Parents, Parenting, Young Adult
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