The Polish Version of the Parental Assistance with Child Emotion Regulation (PACER) Questionnaire: Preliminary Psychometric Properties and Links with Parental Burnout, Mental Health Outcomes, and Emotion Beliefs

Abstract

Background/Objectives: This study presents a brief report on the preliminary psycho-metric properties of a first Polish version of the Parental Assistance with Child EmotionRegulation (PACER) Questionnaire. The PACER measures ten emotion regulation (ER)strategies parents use to assist their children in their ER. We aimed to examine PACER’sinternal consistency reliability, convergent, divergent and discriminant validity. Methods:The sample included 74 Polish-speaking parents aged from 27 to 50, recruited in 2025.Along with the PACER, we used a robust set of psychometric tools for measuring parentalburnout, anxiety and depression symptoms, somatic complaints, well-being, and beliefsabout emotions. Results: All PACER subscale scores demonstrated good-to-excellentinternal consistency reliability (i.e., Cronbach’s alpha of ≥0.83). Encouraging adaptivestrategies (e.g., reappraisal) in one’s children was associated with better outcomes (e.g.,lower parental burnout and psychopathology symptoms), whereas maladaptive strategies(e.g., avoidance) were associated with worse outcomes. We also demonstrated that PACERstrategy scores were statistically separable from maladaptive beliefs about emotions, indi-cating good discriminant validity. Conclusions: Overall, the Polish PACER demonstratedpromising psychometric properties and strong clinical relevance. These findings can help toinform interventions targeted at improving parents’ capacity to help their children regulateemotions, which in turn may help to prevent parental burnout .