| Psychosocial competencies; such as prosocial behaviors, compliance with authority, attention
regulation, independence, and emotional regulation; play a crucial role in child development.
Higher levels of these competencies in childhood are linked to fewer behavior problems, while
deficits in these competencies can predict future problem behaviors. However, there is a
shortage of measures to assess these competencies, especially for Spanish-speaking
populations. Given the growing number of Spanish-speaking children, it is essential to have
reliable measures for assessment and intervention programs. This study translated and
validated the Psychosocial Strengths Inventory for Children and Adolescents (PSICA) and its
short form (PSICA-SF) for Spanish-speaking populations. The study examined the
PSICA’s/PSICA-SF’s Spanish-translation psychometrics and pragmatics using archival data
obtained via MTurk from Spanish-speaking (n = 189) and English-speaking (n = 650) samples
of caregivers reporting on one of their children aged 2–7 years. With the former sample, the
Spanish PSICA/PSICA-SF had adequate-to-excellent internal consistency (s and αs = .74–
.95), and with the exception of the PSICA’s Compliance subscale, the PSICA/PSICA-SF
demonstrated significant small-to-large correlations with relevant subscales of the Strengths and
Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), supporting convergent and concurrent criterion validity.
Additionally, divergent validity was generally supported as linguistic-cultural acculturation did not
substantially influence caregivers' responses on the PSICA-SF, and it only influenced
caregivers’ responses on the PSICA’s Compliance subscale. Multi-group confirmatory factor
analyses indicated that both the PSICA and PSICA-SF had acceptable configural, metric, and
scalar invariance across languages. Additionally, readability analyses indicated that the Spanish
PSICA and PSICA-SF were at a 7th-grade reading level. As hypothesized, these collective
results supported the Spanish PSICA/PSICA-SF’s assessed psychometrics and pragmatics,
and highlight its potential utility in research and clinical settings, specifically with the
underserved and growing Latine population.
Keywords: psychosocial competencies, Spanish, measures, psychometrics, pragmatics,
translation, cultural validation |