Table_1_Children of Parents With a Mental Illness—Stigma Questionnaire: Development and Piloting.docx

Children of parents with a mental illness are a particularly vulnerable group as they have a high risk to develop a mental disorder themselves and those are associated with high stigma. Moreover, just like primary recipients of stigma, they are affected by the social taboo surrounding mental illness: they do not receive enough information, are often left alone with their problems, and are thus considered “invisible children”. In previous research, family stigma has only been assessed through general questionnaires for all family members. What has not yet been adequately investigated is how stigma difficulties affect the children of parents with mental illness in particular. To address these limitations, we developed the Children of Parents with Mental Illness-Stigma-Questionnaire (COPMI-SQ), a self-report instrument for young people aged 12–19 years, designed to assess young people's stigma experiences in daily life. Based on a systematic review preceding the questionnaire, we identified relevant stigma dimensions for children of parents with a mental illness that resulted in 93 items that according to theory were assumed to load on four different scales: experienced stigma, anticipated stigma, self-stigma, and structural discrimination. An expert discussion, and a comprehensibility analysis with the target group followed. In this paper, we report on the development process and initial pilot data (N = 32) on the psychometric properties of the COPMI-SQ. Item analyses via an item difficulty index, discriminatory power, as well as internal consistency analysis resulted in a revised instrument reduced to 67 items. We observed very high internal consistencies (between α = 0.868 and α = 0.975) for the subscales. The approach taken to develop the COPMI-SQ followed scientifically accepted principles by ensuring different construction phases and is considered a solid basis for further reliability and validity studies. The study is ongoing and undergoing a further validation investigation; dimensionality and factor structure will also be examined.

父母罹患精神疾病的儿童属于极具脆弱性的群体：他们自身罹患精神障碍的风险极高，且该群体同样面临严重的病耻感（stigma）问题。
此外，如同病耻感的直接承受者，他们也深受精神疾病相关社会禁忌的困扰：无法获取充足的相关信息，常独自应对自身困境，因此被称为“隐形儿童”。
既往研究中，家庭病耻感（family stigma）仅通过面向全体家庭成员的通用问卷进行评估，而针对病耻感困境如何具体影响父母罹患精神疾病的儿童这一问题，尚未得到充分探究。
为弥补这一研究局限，我们编制了《父母罹患精神疾病儿童病耻感问卷》（Children of Parents with Mental Illness-Stigma-Questionnaire, COPMI-SQ），这是一款面向12至19岁青少年的自陈式量表，用于评估青少年在日常生活中的病耻感体验。在编制该问卷前，我们先开展了系统综述，明确了父母罹患精神疾病的儿童所面临的病耻感相关维度，据此生成93个条目，理论上这些条目可归属于4个不同分量表：经历性病耻感（experienced stigma）、预期性病耻感（anticipated stigma）、自我病耻感（self-stigma）与结构性歧视（structural discrimination）。随后，我们邀请专家开展研讨，并针对目标人群进行了条目可读性分析。
本研究详述了COPMI-SQ的编制流程，并报告了其初步预试验数据（N=32），涉及该量表的心理测量学特征。通过项目难度指数、区分度以及内部一致性分析，我们将初始条目精简至67个，形成修订后的量表。各分量表均表现出极高的内部一致性，克朗巴哈α系数（Cronbach’s α）介于0.868至0.975之间。COPMI-SQ的编制流程遵循了学界公认的科学原则，涵盖多个构建阶段，可为后续的信效度研究提供坚实基础。本研究目前仍在进行中，正开展进一步的验证性研究，同时也将对量表的维度结构与因子结构进行检验。