Brief Parental Self Efficacy Scale (BPSES)

Clinical intent

The Brief Parental Self Efficacy Scale (BPSES) is a short, 5-item measure of parental self-efficacy that can be completed by parents or carers of children and young people.

Parental self-efficacy (PSE) “describes a parent's belief in their ability to perform the parenting role successfully. Higher levels of PSE have consistently been shown to be correlated with a wide range of parenting and child outcomes. Consequently, many parenting interventions aim to improve PSE”. (Wittkowski et al., 2017, p.1)

Scores on the BPSES can be used to measure change over time in PSE, such as pre and post intervention and to initiate explorative conversations (see Other Resources for more information).

Clinical interpretation

Higher scores indicate higher levels of parental self-efficacy.

References

[1] Woolgar, M., Humayun, S., Scott, S., & Dadds, M. R. (2023). I know what to do; I can do it; it will work: the Brief Parental Self Efficacy Scale (BPSES) for parenting interventions. Child Psychiatry & Human Development, 1-10.

[2] Wittkowski, A., Garrett, C., Calam, R., & Weisberg, D. (2017). Self-report measures of parental self-efficacy: A systematic review of the current literature. Journal of child and family studies, 26, 2960-2978.